Other than the massive federal logistics failure that created this situation, pretty much everything I've heard and read about this middle-of-the-night vaccination spree involves human beings being pretty great. https://twitter.com/davidmryder/status/1355122744988364803

The health care workers administering the vaccine were worried that when they called for people 65+ plus to come to the front of the line, they were worried that other people in line would get angry.

Instead, people cheered for them.

People waiting in line in hope of getting one of the about-to-expire vaccines sang Happy Birthday to a stranger waiting in line. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/30/seattle-coronavirus-vaccine-overnight/

I can't remember who it was, but there was a journalist talking about people sobbing after being vaccinated.

With all the focus on people who not only don't want to refuse the vaccine themselves, but are actively trying to stop other people from getting it, and the logistics failures, and all of that, it's really easy to miss how the vast majority of people are reacting.

The vast majority of people are waiting patiently for their vaccine. The vast majority of people who've been vaccinated are still masking and social distancing in public to protect others who might still be able to catch COVID from the vaccinated.

People are waiting in line in hope that they might be able to get a lifesaving vaccine, but when someone older than them gets to skip the line, instead of rioting, they're cheering for them.

Remember that: in the fact of conflicting information from authority figures, the biggest social media platforms in the world actively enabling misinformation and conspiracy theories, intense economic strain, societal mental health impacts, etc...

Most people are being patient.

Like, it's one thing to jump in and do something that feels charitable, or even heroic, in the middle of an acute crisis situation happening in front of your face (and that's good too!) but the overwhelming majority of people have been doing a hard thing for almost a year.

And that actually gives me more faith in humanity than the dramatic heroism that usually gets covered in the news.

This is the slow, unglamorous, patient work of repair, of caring for each other in ways that don't have the self-esteem boost of the types of charity we valorize.

We're not going to have a Victory Day in Times Square for this. We're not going to have A Moment where it's over. It will wind down in slow, subtle stages, and no one will be able to mark the moment that it ends.

The closest, I think, that any of us are going to get might be waiting in line, in the dark and drizzle, six feet away from the nearest person, and cheering as people more vulnerable than we are step up to cross a quiet, attenuated border into not being afraid anymore.

(and yes, Twitter pedants, I'm aware that V-J Day didn't actually mark the end of the war, and that this isn't a war--I'm saying we're not going to have a spontaneous, giant, at-the-same-time, public celebration)