Cure needs your help

The COVID-19 cavalry is on the horizon. Scientists have produced vaccines in record time and there’s an end in sight to the pandemic catastrophe.

Now all you have to do is take the shot.

That should be obvious, but it seems researchers needed a second vaccine to attack the virus of suspicion, paranoia and misinformation that threatens to derail the project.

“To beat this pandemic, we also have to defeat the parallel pandemic of distrust,” said Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Polls show about 60% of Americans are willing to take the vaccine. That’s a problem. In order to achieve herd immunity and snuff out the virus, about 70% of the population must be vaccinated.

That’s about 230 million Americans, but vaccines aren’t 100% effective. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines average about 95% efficacy.

That means about 240 million people in the U.S. need to take it.

You need to be one of them. You need to put aside the conspiracy theories, historical suspicion and apprehensions that come with a new cure.

They are nothing new. When a smallpox epidemic gripped Montreal in 1885, a conniving doctor named Alexander Ross published a pamphlet that advised sick people to visit him instead of the vaccination center.

“THOUSANDS of PEOPLE insanely rushing to the shambles of the vaccinators,” Ross wrote, “as the people of the dark ages did to the soothsayers and miracle workers for protection against evil spirits.”

Such nonsense is now amplified by the internet and B-list celebrities who fancy themselves epidemiologists.

Like just about everything else these days, the COVID-19 vaccine has been politicized. The right is wary of masks, shutdowns and other health edicts.

The left turned the vaccine into a talking point. In the vice president debate, Kamala Harris said she’d take it if Dr. Anthony Fauci said to.

“But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it,” Harris said, “then I’m not taking it.”

The demagoguery is a disservice to the medical community. It took an astounding amount of brainpower and organization it took to produce a vaccine in 10 months.

Pfizer submitted the first application for vaccine authorization on Nov. 20 after trials on 44,000 study patients. The Food and Drug Administration had 150 people working around the clock investigating that data.“We realize there is an issue in the U.S. around vaccine hesitancy. There have been concerns raised about the speed with which Covid-19 vaccines have been developed,” FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn told the Wall Street Journal.

The only discernible flaw in Operation Warp Speed is its name.

Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have said they’ll go on TV and take the vaccine to help promote its acceptance.