The rich get richer...

...and the sick get sicker

View this email online Fam: As Anais Nin once said, "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." Right now, the vaccine rollout is demonstrating just how much our perspectives are informed by who, and where, we are. IN THE NEWS Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images If you had told us toward the beginning of the pandemic that, come April 2021, more than 100 million U.S. residents would have gotten at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, we might have laughed in your face. After all, this is the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed, thanks to a brand-new technology that uses modified messenger RNA to produce COVID-fighting antibodies. (If you’re confused about the science, may we direct you to our favorite TikTok explainer?) Now, nearly 30% of the total U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, and COVID cases and hospitalizations are declining in most states. Some of the country' most vulnerable populations have made remarkable strides toward inoculating their communities; the Navajo Nation, which experienced a disproportionately high rate of cases last spring, says it’s vaccinated more than half of its adults.  But there’s a big caveat to that news: The United States is one of the few countries where widespread vaccination has been happening. When it comes to much of the rest of the globe, the picture is very, very different.  Take India, for example: Over the past two weeks, the slope representing the country's new infection rates has become almost vertical. Hospitals are completely overwhelmed, and oxygen has become a precious commodity. Social media has been flooded with people’s pleas for extra canisters for themselves and their loved ones. Members of the Indian diaspora across the globe have tried to help from afar, like a Bay Area couple who set up a fundraiser to get more units of oxygen delivered to hospitals in New Delhi. “Every Indian you speak to will tell you we know somebody who has passed away in the last few days because they weren't able to find a hospital to take them — or they weren't able to get access to oxygen,” Kanika Mediratta told KQED News.  Meanwhile, their vaccination rollout is going extremely slowly; according to CNN’s latest analysis, only 1.7% of India’s residents have been fully vaccinated, as opposed to nearly 30% of U.S. residents. Vaccine rollouts are going even more slowly in other areas; in eight countries (including Guinea and Guatemala), fewer than 1% of residents have been even partially vaccinated. As the Washington Post reports, nearly half of available doses have gone to the world’s highest-income countries, including the U.S. and United Kingdom (whose residents make up just 16% of the world population.) Part of the reason that’s happening? The vaccines were largely developed and manufactured in those high-income countries, which were then able to cut deals with the pharmaceutical companies to get first access. Now, countries that had the resources to buy up doses early are the ones that have stockpiled—or, as critics have argued, hoarded—a supply of their own.  To be sure, the situation is evolving. As Vanity Fair pointed out, the terms of the contracts that the Trump administration negotiated with pharmaceutical companies state that the doses the U.S. bought have to be used within the country. But the Biden administration seems keen to share resources as it can; plans are underway to loan millions of AstraZeneca doses to countries including India, Mexico and Canada. The administration has also reversed the country’s previous ban on sharing the raw materials for vaccine manufacturing, pledging those materials, ventilators and personal protective equipment to overwhelmed health care systems in India.  It’s possible that steps like these could help even the playing field for poorer countries, which are relying on a global initiative called Covax to get vaccine access. (The U.S., so far, has pledged $4 billion to the initiative, which is being co-led by NGOs including the World Health Organization and aims to support more “equitable distribution of 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the world’s poorest countries before the end of 2021.”) But the extent of success will likely depend on whether pharmaceutical companies, which hold the patents for the life-saving inoculations, allow wealthy countries to donate or resell their extra doses. It’ll also depend on whether the Biden administration listens to activists and nonprofits who are urging the White House to temporarily waive the patent rights of those vaccine companies, giving poorer countries the ability to make their own supply. We’ll keep our eyes on what happens next. Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images #OscarsSo…What? After the #OscarsSoWhite campaign begun by activist April Reign, whose terse Twitter hashtag pointed out the overwhelmingly alabaster nature of the 2015 Oscars, the Academy has tried to have more visible diversity. Since then, some years it’s done better than others. (For one thing, it elected Cheryl Boone Isaacs as president of the Academy—three times. Isaacs promptly announced she would be opening up Academy membership, which brought in a number of women, people of color and young folks.) Sunday’s viewership was the lowest in the Academy’s recent history (the numbers have been slipping over the past several years), but it was also the most racially diverse distribution of awards in the Academy’s history. People of color triumphed in categories ranging from Best Supporting Actor/Actress to (Daniel Kaluuya and Youn Yuh-Jung) to Best Director and Picture (Chloe Zhou, for Nomadland). Tyler Perry gave a heartfelt speech on the value of tolerance and compassion as he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson were the first Black women in academy history to receive Oscars for Hair and Makeup (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; they partnered with Sergio Lopez-Rivera.) Neal told viewers she looked forward to the day when POCs winning Oscars won’t be exceptional, “it will just be normal.” Franklin Leonard, a producer who began an annual compilation of the best unproduced scripts and screenplays, The Black List, pointed out Hollywood has some distance to go to realize its full potential. Not becoming more diverse, Leonard said in a opinion piece for The New York Times, is not only morally incorrect—it’s leaving money on the table. A lot of it. Maybe Hollywood will listen and soon we’ll have another hashtag: #OscarsSoSmart? Again, we'll, uhhh...keep our eyes on what happens next.   Newsletter continues after sponsor message ON THE POD NPR Did you miss our Philly-themed virtual live show earlier this month? If you did attend, do you wish you could experience it all over again? If so, you’re in luck: We’ve got the show up on our feed! Alongside special guests Erika Alexander and Denice Frohman, we talk reparations, basketball, poetry and the word “jawn.” Listen Here READ / WATCH / LISTEN Kumari Devarajan, producer: “I’m reading my former colleague, Kat Chow’s upcoming memoir Seeing Ghosts about how she experienced the loss of her mother at 13. While it is a stunning tribute to the woman she called mom, this book is also a brilliant interrogation of how grief messes with us. Kat lets the reader see how her own brain keeps swerving away from the details of her mother’s death as she’s trying to write about it. There are just so many clumsy, shameful puzzle pieces to tragedy. For example: Kat and her sisters choosing to bury their mother in a cheap, L.L. Bean dress. A relative looking into the open casket and remarking to Kat and her sisters that their mother looked like she might still be alive. Or 13-year-old Kat watching her mother being kept alive on a ventilator while reading a fantasy book, wishing she, like the characters in the book, could cast a spell to keep her mother alive. Kat lifts the veil on how we cope with the most unfair parts of life and exposes that process to be purely human.” Karen Grigsby Bates, senior correspondent: “I watched the short documentary Time. Director Garrett Bradley has made an inexpressibly beautiful film about one woman’s fight against an inherently unequal criminal justice system. A moment of desperation for Sybil Richardson and her husband Robert becomes a lifetime of separation when he is sentenced to 60 years without parole for attempting to rob a credit union to save their failing business in Shreveport, La. Home movies show Richardson as she raises her six sons alone, builds a business and continues to advocate for Robert’s release. Time is about love and faith and dedication. And about how who you are is as much a determinant in today’s criminal justice system as what you did.” That’s all from us. If you can, try to imagine the world from someone else's perspective this week. It might help you step outside of yourself (and goodness knows, sometimes that's a good thing.) Written by Natalie Escobar and Karen Grigsby Bates, edited by Leah Donnella and fact-checked by Summer Thomad Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: codeswitch@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Politics, Health and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Code Switch emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy