I walked down to the Duane Reade drugstore on John Street in Lower Manhattan last month. After waiting for the doors to open, I entered the First World. A pharmacist placed me on a shelf of Tums, and gave me a shot from Pfizer. The pharmacist suggested that you stay for 15 minutes in case of a reaction.AdvertisementIt was so easy! It didn't matter that I had an expired ID. I was able to register in minutes and pay nothing. Paula Abdul, who sang Rush, Rush I Want to See You Free with Me, was on the in-store radio. I felt like I had been admitted into a new, free world, the vaccinated one.AdvertisementAdvertisementSubscribe to the Slatest Newsletter Get a daily email update with the latest stories. Signing you up was not possible due to an error Please try again. To use this form, please enable jаvascript. Email address: I would like to receive updates on Slate special offers. You agree to our Privacy Policy & Terms by signing up. Thank you for signing up! You can cancel your subscription at any time.In May, I was compelled to travel from New Delhi to New York City by sudden events. From a city that was being decimated by the second coronavirus wave, I flew to New York City, where I saw people wearing light layers and drinking Negronis at tables. Online I was able to find a list of vaccines (high-status and basic) as well as places to obtain them. There were J&J shots at the American Museum of Natural History under the belly of the blue whale, and Pfizer at the nearby drugstore.AdvertisementSoon, my arm was covered in a tacky red bandage with a white W. It was the logo for the retailer chain. It looked almost like a bag of frozen chicken breasts to me. It was so strange and American to get a miracle injection in between the shelves of microwaveable pork rinds and diet energy drinks. It was also appropriate that the shots were already surplus inventory, and were displayed before the public like basement bargains. One million dollars. A shotgun.India was a different country. If you were under 45, even one shot, it was like going through a needles eye. We were now paying for the delusion. Indians were misled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to believe they were inoculated against COVID after a mild initial wave. His party did not prioritize vaccination and instead focused on other grand plans: controversial agricultural laws that were passed through Parliament despite widespread protests; a massive building project to refashion imperial New Delhi; and plans to win a state election for West Bengal, where Modis party had established its reputation as an unstoppable national force.AdvertisementAdvertisementModi had pledged to end the pandemic in 2020 under the motto of self-reliance. He wanted to rely solely on domestic production. It became obvious that the task to vaccinate a billion Indians was impossible if Modi and his cultof personality were not attached to their train of nationalist bluster.India was not allowing its citizens to order vaccines or import them from India by 2021. Private firm The Serum Institute had also signed its own agreement with AstraZeneca and began to export most of its doses overseas. India had already ordered 35 million doses by March 31st. The illusion of immunity started to fade, and then it disappeared.AdvertisementMy April memories were haunted by images I'd read about in history books, such as scenes of Native American villages being decimated by smallpox or the cholera epidemic among Burmese refugees fleeing Burma during World War II. These were stark comparisons. These were extreme comparisons. However, I saw the historical scenes in my private homes and in the homes of my friends.AdvertisementThe images of Delhi showed hospitals and crematoria. You could also park your camera there and record the chaos. No one I knew was following the news. My partner and I would sit at our computers for hours, trying to do our jobs, while looking up every hour to see if there was a new name. This meant that the person had died. We worried about friends who were sick and listened to their stories over the phone.AdvertisementThere was no chance of getting a bed in a hospital. They tried to use the highest privileges in order to obtain them. Five hours after he had waited for admission, a former diplomat and India's ambassador to Algeria died in the parking lot at a major hospital in National Capital Region. There was no oxygen to take home. Even hospitals were posting on Twitter asking for help. There was not one doctor you could call, no way to fill prescriptions, and only a handful of hopeless phone numbers. These are remnants of a functioning state. Soon, India was catching more infections per day than all of the other countries.My friend called me and said that my mother was ill. I could take care of her. My father and I both have positive tests. What happens if she gets sick and I can't care for her? What happens if there is only one hospital bed but we need two? Who will help? I didn't know. They couldn't risk coming here, as they had their parents and no hope for hospital care.AdvertisementSolidarity was becoming more difficult behind a fragile wall of volunteerism and mutual aid. To help the sick and the abandoned meant that you were risking becoming one of them. This is the place where the haunting outline of condemned peoples from the past appeared. They faced new and bewildering diseases and knew that they had to care for each other and keep bringing water and treating fevers as each one fell.The ones responsible sat by and watched.Although it had been some time since I'd experienced culture shock upon arriving in the United States I did feel it now and I pondered it: the luxury of living in a vaccinated environment. I was chatting with a friend at the park when I heard about his date night. He took the subway to Bushwick, shared a vape at a bar and went home to sleep with a stranger. Although the sex was experimental and risky, what surprised me most was that you took the subway. It was all starting again: commerce and commutes, cocktails alfresco. The quickening beats in a city rising out of its bed.AdvertisementMy partner and I were back home in Delhi. She was in our bunker, binging on The Bold Type. This is a dream of millennial high-life and Manhattan officegoing. I was there now, my virtual and real landscapes were exchanged, the highlife all around me, the pandemic in my phone. The lockdown was again extended in Delhi. On Twitter, I saw a photo of hundreds of wooden pushcarts - the ones rented to sell fruit and biscuits - stacked by the roadside for weeks. I could hear the hunger roar. I see bags of chicken pesto paninis being placed in dumpsters at sunset.AdvertisementAdvertisementIf you are unable to go out for food, your purchasing power is less. It also means less if there is an emergency outside of the hospital.Indian headlines were filled with a strange kind of dj vu: India granted foreign aid for the first time in my adulthood. It was almost familiar to me how the disparity in hope between these countries felt. It was a decade before we had terms: First World and Second World. I remember very nice things coming out of suitcases that had Pan Am tags. Later, the nicer things that were American were found in the city's center thanks to new laws.AdvertisementEven American jobs had become available in my home town by the turn of the millennium. Third World was an offensive and outdated concept. For us, Emerging Nation was the term. We grew accustomed to the First World array of fine goods, both imported and homegrown, franchised but also boutique. All of this is still there, but the pandemic has made it impossible for them to return it in an unknown condition at an unknown time. If you are unable to go out for food, your purchasing power is less. It's even less if you are trapped in a long line outside a hospital.I am now back from the First World to The Great Unvaxxed. India's numbers reached an unbelievable peak of more than 400,000 cases per day. This is an official number, but it was an undercount. The lockdowns began to decrease. The Economist reported that India had experienced a million extra deaths since the beginning of the year. The infection had spread to the villages, where there were few nasal swabs and the health care system was not working properly, by the time I returned home.AdvertisementAdvertisementZeynep Tifekci, a scholar, observed that the AIDS pandemic had a terrible moral repercussion. Most of its victims died when lifesaving drugs were discovered. HIV-positive people no longer considered terminal after 1995 thanks to combination antiretrovirals (also known as the AIDS Cocktail). The vast majority of AIDS deaths occurred in India and sub Saharan Africa in the decade that followed, due to the fact that the drugs were patented, and the prices for them far exceeded the Third World's incomes. This tragedy has been repeated in India in 2021. The majority of deaths occurred months after vaccines had become available. Urban Indians are often left stunned by the loss and abandonment they have suffered.Indian government's bravadoa form vaccine hesitancy at its highest level, was shattered when the second wave of attacks swept into Delhi. The Serum Institutes entire output was banned by the government. India's failures have cost a lot of other Asian and African countries. They ordered millions of vaccines, but had to turn to richer countries for help.AdvertisementIndia also promised to allow imports from vaccines that have been approved by foreign regulators. It continues to block Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and other foreign regulators. This is a shameful folly, as mRNA vaccines like Pfizers have been shown to be more effective against the delta variant than non-mRNA alternatives. On Dec. 14, the first Pfizer shot was administered to a Long Island nurse. This is 200 days of lost life and time.AdvertisementThe Delhi lockdown started to ease in June. With their single shot semi-immunity, and shot nerves, residents made their way back to semi-shuttered Delhi. Everything is still in flux: It's up to us whether we get our second shot or our third. 2.4% of India's population had been fully vaccinated on May 15. This figure was only 1% more than a month later. Every day lost increases the risk of new waves, new lockdowns and a perpetual cycle that is threatening Indian lives. The lag in immunization stems from a series of economic, intellectual and nutritional losses that will likely continue for generations.AdvertisementMany millions of Indians have seen our transition from Third World to emerging superpower country as a trick of words. Millions of other people have been able to escape generations of poverty and into a dreaming, but precarious middle class over the past 30 years. These dreams are being shattered. The Pew Research Center had estimated in March that 75 million Indians were already living in poverty due to the pandemic. This estimate assumes a per-capita poverty line of $2/day. The Centre for Sustainable Employment in Bengaluru used a national minimum wages (representing a decent standard for living) to calculate how many people have fallen below that wage: 230 million. This large number is part of a Submerging Nation. It is a country with declining numberswages and savings, food, and dwindling hope.Although the dismal divisions that once divided the world seemed to have passed us by, I can see it breaking apart right under my feet. One version of me can be found on either side. I count down the weeks to my partners' shooting in New Delhi. I hope that my country can move quickly beyond its hubris, addled nationalism, as well as the rich world to meet us. This means not only sharing vaccine stocks in charity but also the means of ensuring they are internationally produced and sustained. The AIDS cocktail, the tears, and Pyrrhic Relief of 1995, which ended a pandemic but only for the wealthy, may have caused me to be unable to remember. New York is a place where I enjoy sweet freedom and the return to First World problems. I worry: Do I really need to say Nearly there when I'm just leaving? If I run three blocks from the subway, will I get sweaty? Are there any other things I'm forgetting?
