My brother-in-law, who lives in Vietnam, urgently wants to get vaccinated against COVID-19 — but can’t. Vaccine in Vietnam is hard to come by as it is in many nations around the world.

According to the Our World Data project, just 0.38 percent of the Vietnamese population is fully vaccinated. 

Looking at the Our World graph on vaccination is revealing: Canada leads the way with 70.83 of its population having received at least one shot and 54.73 percent fully vaccinated. Canada is followed by the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, France — and the United States. As of July 24, just 48.66 percent of our population was fully vaccinated and 56.21 percent had gotten one shot.

This is in a nation where vaccine is readily available and many states and localities, including New York State and Albany County, have set up incentives to encourage residents to get vaccinated.

Developing nations have the lowest vaccination rates and the highest infection rates. These are the places where the virus is more likely to not just spread but mutate. So far, the current vaccines have been successful in shielding recipients from new variants — most notable the highly contagious Delta variant, which was first identified in India and is now predominant here in the United States.

As we wrote on this page in November 2020, quoting the Gates Foundation report, “COVID-19: A Global Perspective”: “How bad the pandemic gets and how long it lasts is largely within the world’s control. Ultimately, businesses and governments must really believe that the future is not a zero-sum contest in which winners win only when losers lose. It is a cooperative endeavor in which we all make progress together.”

The Biden administration’s initiative in sending vaccine to places in need will benefit not just those countries but the entire world.

The same is true, on an individual level, in the United States: Getting vaccinated protects not just you and your family but your community at large.

We remember the furor when first Pfizer and soon after Moderna, followed later by Johnson & Johnson, got emergency authorization from the Federal Drug Administration for their vaccines. We wrote about the difficulties eager residents had in navigating computers to schedule appointments for shots; we wrote about residents waiting outside clinics, hoping for leftovers. We wrote about tears of joy and hugs of gratitude as people finally received their shots — their shield against hospitalization and death, and ultimately their ticket back to society.

At the time, Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen categorized three groups: The early adopters were those who embraced the science and quickly got shots; then there were the people who would “wait and see” followed by the skeptical anti-vaxers.

Our nation is stalled. Scientists say we need 70 to 90 percent of the population to have immunity from COVID-19 in order to return to life as we knew it. The states with the lowest vaccination rates are those with the highest sickness and death rates.

Last week, we gathered virtually with editors from across the country and around the world for the annual convention of the International Society of Newspaper Editors and heard firsthand of the suffering in places with low vaccination rates.

We also heard disbelief from some editors in this country. Mike Buffington lives in the county in Georgia with the lowest vaccination rate in the state, a fact that was celebrated by residents there, he said. “We live in some strange times when truth and facts don’t matter to some people,” he said.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a not-for-profit that does polling and analysis focused on health care, found that current vaccination behavior largely reflects what residents said in January 2021, when vaccine distribution began. A half-year later, the same representative sampling of adults were contacted by KFF “to find out whether they chose to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, their reasoning behind their decisions, and how they are feeling about their choice.”

The vast majority (92 percent) of those who planned to get vaccinated “as soon as possible” in early 2021 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, as have slightly more than half (54 percent) of individuals who had previously said they wanted to “wait and see” before getting vaccinated. On the other hand, a majority (76 percent) of people who had previously said they would “only get vaccinated if required” or said they would “definitely not” get a COVID-19 vaccine remain unvaccinated.

One-fifth of adults (21 percent) now report being vaccinated after saying in January they planned on waiting to get vaccinated, would only get it if required, or would definitely not get vaccinated. “Many of these individuals noted the role of their friends and family members as well as their personal doctors in persuading them to get a vaccine,” said the KFF report.

When asked to name the feeling that best describes how they feel now that they have been vaccinated, nearly a quarter of vaccinated adults offer responses around feeling safe (24 percent) and relieved (22 percent). Other positive feelings reported were freedom, confidence, and more certainty that if they did get COVID-19 it would be less serious or they were less likely to die from it. And while most respondents react with some positive emotion, one in 10 said they felt the same or neutral.

Here in Albany County, there is an uptick in cases after weeks of only single-digit daily infections. In our coverage area, the vaccination disparity we outlined in June remains clear. Suburban areas have markedly higher rates than rural areas. Coeymans Hollow has a rate of 30.5 percent of adults receiving at least one shot while Slingerlands has a rate of 85.2 percent, according to the state’s website that tracks vaccination by ZIP code.

We hope, if you are reading this, you can think of The Enterprise as a friend, telling you it is safe to get vaccinated. Everyone on the Enterprise staff is vaccinated against COVID-19. A few of us had sore arms or a day of malaise but none of us had serious side effects. And now we are free — free to cover crowded meetings and large gatherings, feeling safe and secure.

Earlier this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced an almost 70-percent jump in the seven-day rolling average for new cases of COVID-19 in the United States. Walensky termed it “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Places with low vaccination rates are driving the increases. The Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, continues to have the highest COVID-19 infection rate of any of the state’s 10 regions.

If the infection rates continue to rise, we could all lose our hard-won freedoms to travel as we please and gather with those we love.

But, if you are not moved by the serving common good, please read this post from Brytney Cobia, a hospital doctor at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, who reports she has made a lot of progress lately in encouraging people to get vaccinated.

“Do you want to know how?” the doctor asks. “I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

She goes on, “A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same. They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu.’

“But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”