Please Stop Vaccine Shaming People
The point is to get shots in our arms, not to fight with each other
On Tuesday morning, the New York Times’ Katie Thomas wrote about a site called Dr. B. Dr. B is the sort of site that’s doing what the internet was intended to do back before it became nothing but cat videos and white nationalist memes. It brings people together to provide information in an efficient, helpful way that would be impossible otherwise.
Dr. B is the creation of Cyrus Massoumi, an entrepreneur who had heard about doses of vaccines being wasted because of missed appointments and medical providers being forced to destroy them rather than give them to someone who wants them. Basically, if you sign up for Dr. B, when there is a provider near you that has extra shots at the end of the day, they will text you. You have (roughly) 15 minutes to respond, and then get yourself to the vaccination site before the vaccine goes bad. The site is a grassroots attempt to eliminate waste and to help people. It strikes me as an unalloyed good.
It also made me feel guilty signing up. I am 45 years old with no preexisting conditions, I am not obese, no comorbidities, nothing that should move me up any priority groups for the vaccine. I was a regular pack-a-day smoker more than a decade ago, which would qualify me in North Carolina…
