Biden’s vaccine drive is too slow

I’m hooked on vaccine data. Barely an hour at my desk goes by without hitting refresh on a website telling me how many doses of Covid-19 vaccines have gone into arms around the world. A good day in either the US, where I live, or the UK, where I’m from, brings a frisson of excitement not dissimilar to what I imagine a gambling addict feels when his number hits. Slow progress sends me into a sulk. Either way, I need my fix.

The cause of my addiction is not complicated: I am fed up of this wretched pandemic. And the more aggressive the vaccination drive, the sooner it is over. Informing all of this is a mixture of impatience and optimism. Impatience because, well, this sucks. Optimism because the vaccines really do work, reducing transmission, practically eliminating serious illness and death, and allowing us to entertain the possibility of a normal life.