Thread by @AbraarKaran

Check out this new piece from Ed Yong in @TheAtlantic on pandemic year two

Thanks to Ed for having me share some of my thoughts here alongside a number of colleagues

We have an immense year ahead of us

#covid19

https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1343912631258804229

2/ “There will be a whole lot of pain in the first quarter” of 2021 --Anthony Fauci told Ed in this piece.

I agree. I am hopeful that summer 2021 will be our first major exhale in a while.

3/ One of the most consequential parts of reaching a better summer 2021 is going to be our vaccination strategy, which we aren't doing well right now. Read this thread below

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1343768397084053505?s=20

4/ One of the important points that Ed's piece mentions re vaccine distribution is that it will be a "patchwork"-- and that certain parts of communities will have groups of unvaccinated people. The biggest concern to me is that these will trace along previous lines of inequity

5/ My contribution to Ed's piece was this-- our neocolonial global health enterprise created an expectation that the "West" was going to better at dealing with an epidemic than parts of Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. That is completely untrue, & many of us in this field knew that

6/ "Indeed, the U.S. has a long history of plastering over social problems with technological fixes."

This line hits deep. With the vaccine, some part of me worried that many would reach for this silver bullet & forget that social inequities are why we are where we are now.

7/ Conclusion- Read the piece.

Subscribe to @TheAtlantic which has had really excellent, thoughtful, involved, nuanced writing this entire year.

Lots to think about & even more to do.