The event “Global Perspectives on COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution” took place on March 2nd, 2021 on Zoom. It was a dialogue driven by students from Canada, China, India, and the United States revolving around the specifics of the vaccine roll-out.
In my break-out room, the majority of students were from the U.S., and we mainly talked about the difficulties vaccine distribution faces. Social media was constantly mentioned during our discussion and we agree it is crucial in vaccine distribution: if well used, it could accelerate the process of distributing vaccines; if not, it could cause serious problems, for example the public distrust we face.
It is evident that the U.S. and China citizens are skeptical about the safety of vaccines. There are news online such as people still getting infected and even dying after being vaccinated. The news raises doubt and fear among people. By talking about this, we think that it is important to validate and filter the news content and make sure the news are indeed authentic and unbiased. Also, the government should carefully examine the vaccine with the scientific and medical departments to ensure its effects. It is good that the media is not hiding the negative news from the public, but I realized there is something missing – I noticed that I have not seen much educational information about vaccines being posted online. Many people may not know clearly the mechanism and the importance of vaccines. Then those people would naturally be skeptical or even oppose vaccine distribution because of the large media exposure of negative news. We think that propagandas and infographics can be used. I learnt that another possible reason for the public distrust of vaccines is the public distrust of the government. My group members said they lost their confidence in the government because of its slow reactions towards the pandemic.
All of the above obstructs vaccine distribution and slows down the process. In order to make vaccine distribution efficient, many decisions need to be made by the government. As young leaders, what we can do is to arm ourselves with knowledge and eyes looking for the latest news. We should remain calm and think critically about these issues and guide people in our community towards the best choices, the ones that are most likely to end the pandemic and benefit mankind and the world as a whole.
In March when this event took place, vaccine distribution had just started. Now, in June, when I am writing this reflection, vaccine distribution is operating faster and smoothly. Thinking back to the event, the dialogue was indeed inspiring and touched on many important factors in distributing vaccines. I could see a lot of more educational posts online about vaccines and precise data on the number of people getting vaccinated provided by the government. On June 21st, we have more than 177million people in the United States who have got at least one dose of vaccine, which is a huge progress since there were only about 51million people who got their first vaccine on the day when the event took place(March 2nd).