#101 The Vaccine Question 🎧

<em>This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: </em><strong><em>how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?</em></strong><br/><br/><em>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.</em><br/><br/><em>- RSJ</em><br/><br/><a target="_blank" href="https://www.livemint.com/science/health/misinformation-blamed-for-slow-start-to-india-vaccine-drive-11611135033527.html">News reports </a>suggest the vaccination drive among frontline workers is going slower than expected. <br/><br/>The issue isn’t the supply. It’s demand. <br/><br/>Frontline workers seem to have apprehensions about the safety of the vaccines.<br/><br/>An Old Story<br/><br/>I was reading up on the history of vaccines last week after I heard a good BBC history podcast on Edward Jenner who did pioneering work on smallpox vaccine. Four points stood out:<br/><br/>The scourge that was smallpox. It was super infectious, and the fatality rates were over 30 per cent. It wiped out civilizations as European powers spread it through South America and Africa. There was no real cure except something called variolation where a small amount of material from smallpox scabs were given directly to healthy people. These healthy people then developed symptoms of smallpox but these were milder. Fewer of them died through this than the normal method of getting the pox.<br/><br/>Jenner discovered vaccination somewhat serendipitously. He came across a milkmaid who told him she won’t get smallpox because she had already got cow pox (a