How I learned to stop worrying and love the vaccine line theweek.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theweek.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the middle of January, as 300 people a day died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County and an additional 15,000 became newly infected, a friend of mine posted a photo of himself to Instagram. “Bye COVID,” the caption read, with a image of him getting a shot in his arm. But wait my friend is young and healthy and doesn’t work in healthcare, so how did he get the vaccine?
When I asked the friend who requested I not use his name for this story, so let’s call him Peter how he got the vaccine, he told me “Strings, brother.” When I asked if it was ethical that he, a relatively low-risk individual, get the shot before high-risk individuals in desperate need, he told me, “Either it’s thrown away or someone uses it. I’ll vote for using it.”
What would Leslie Knope do?
Creator of ‘Parks and Recreation’ and ‘The Good Place’ joins philosophy professor to speak about civic engagement in teen media
Center for Scholars and Storytellers
From left: Navia Robinson, Mike Schur and Pamela Hieronymi Alison Hewitt |
February 3, 2021
Some impressively civic-minded comedies are showing up in teens’ streaming queues during the pandemic. As we all turn to TV comfort food while keeping safer at home, shows like “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Place” are rising to the top for teens, according to a small survey by the UCLA-based Center for Scholars and Storytellers.
Though the shows weren’t originally aimed specifically at teens, Yalda Uhls, the center’s executive director and a UCLA adjunct assistant professor of psychology, says perhaps that’s because no one was listening to what teens want to watch. Now teens can weigh in on Feb. 5 at the center’s event, “What Would Leslie Knope Do?”
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As I finished up my transaction, I noticed the clerkâs expression â the portion visible above her mask. âEverything okay? Is your family healthy?â I asked. She shook her head and closed her eyes tight, fighting tears. âNo, everythingâs not okay. My dadâs dying, and weâre taking him off life support today.â Standing 6 feet away from her, I started to tear up, too. Her father had battled COVID-19 in a hospital in a faraway state. âHeâs going to die alone,â she said.
Normally I respond to this kind of suffering with physical connection, and yet I could not hug her or even touch her arm gently. I apologized for not being able to physically comfort her and then asked about her dadâs name. I wanted to keep him in my thoughts and wish him a gentle passage from this life. This did not feel like nearly enough; I walked to the car with a very heavy heart.