The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in coordination with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense (DoD) have released documents to health officials in all 50 states outlining the strategy for the distribution of a possible coronavirus vaccine. 

This strategy is a result of the efforts made by Operation Warp Speed. Operation Warp Speed is a partnership between the HHS and DoD, as well as other federal agencies and private firms that coordinate to help accelerate the development, manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.

The “COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook for Jurisdiction Operations” outlines a three-phased approach to the vaccination process. The first phase is set to begin as soon as a coronavirus vaccine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Trump administration announced that they are hoping for that approval to come as soon as early November. 

With the limited supply of doses expected to be available in the first few months, Phase one distribution concentrates on what they have deemed critical populations that include healthcare professionals, higher risk individuals and essential workers. 

Phase two will begin as soon as a large number of vaccine doses become available for the general public, which is estimated to not be until January 2021 at the earliest. 

The final phase will begin as the demand for coronavirus vaccinations begins to decrease, resulting in a shift to open access to the vaccination and routine doses. 

Some people have begun questioning how the vaccine will be distributed fairly within the general population while doses are still limited. The CDC has reassured the distribution process will be fair and equitable, including in their plan that minority populations known to be at greater risk will receive priority access to the vaccine.

The looming possibility for widespread distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine is going to be a complex effort that will need the urgent preparation and cooperation of all levels of government in order to be a success. The Trump administration has struggled with the logistical challenges of containing the spread of coronavirus, so this daunting task of proper vaccine handling and allocation spreads concerns of effectiveness. 

Some health experts worry that the Trump administration is compromising scientific integrity by seeking to rush vaccine approval and distribution so that it occurs before Election Day on Nov. 3. This casts doubts on the President’s intentions and the safety of the vaccine.

A poll released by NPR in August found that 60 percent of Americans say they will choose to be vaccinated if a COVID-19 vaccine is made available to them and 35 percent would decline.

The timeline on a possible coronavirus vaccine is unprecedented, taking less than a year to complete a process that usually takes several to yield reliable results. The leaders of Operation Warp Speed are trying to allay public concerns of the safety of the vaccine by publishing an outline of their progress and reiterating how any possible vaccine will be held to high scientific standards. The FDA is also stressing that if they make a decision for an emergency use authorization before testing has concluded, it will be based solely on data rather than politics. 

The coronavirus vaccine will be distributed to states in order based on proportional population. This means that Missouri would be the 18th state to receive the new vaccine. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services Director, Dr. Randall Williams, assures that the department, in conjunction with the CDC, has begun actively planning for the complicated distribution methods needed to effectively provide vaccinations for people in all areas of the state.

We have all seen the countless videos centered around the big question everyone seems to want to know: is the new baby a bouncing boy or a glittery girl? You’ll find your answer in cakes filled with sprinkles, balloons filled with confetti, baseballs filled with colored powder and, recently, pyrotechnics gone wrong. Gender reveal parties have become a rite of passage for many new parents – and it may seem like this tradition has been going on for a long time – but in reality it is fairly new.

Originating in the U.S. in 2009, gender reveal parties began in the backyard of Jenna Karvunidis, during a barbecue celebration of her pregnancy. After the recent birth of her nephew, many members of her family were not as excited by the announcement of her baby as she would have liked. So she came up with a theatrical plan to introduce some fun back into the baby shower with a surprise sex reveal. 

She baked two rubber duck-shaped cakes, one filled with blue frosting for male and the other with pink for female. At her 20-week ultrasound she asked her midwife to keep the sex of the baby a secret and instead write it down on a piece of paper that would determine which cake would be used. She is credited with being the first to really popularize this trend after posting about her pink frosting filled cake on her blog, High Gloss and Sauce. 

The post garnered some local attention and was eventually picked up by a Chicago magazine  The Bump, which was popular in the waiting rooms of obstetricians and midwives in the area. That was where the phenomenon started, but the internet really popularized it as videos started to appear of the parties. The first videos of reveals are dated in 2009 and really seem to start to trend in mid-2011. Google trends correspond to this as well with the first searches of the term “gender reveal” appearing mid-2010.

What started as an innocent cake reveal has now become a massive competition. It seems with each new video the reveals have become more and more extravagant – and dangerous. It has become less of a celebration of new life and more a showcase of parents-to-be hellbent on one-upping each other. In 2018, an alligator was even involved in a reveal with a video circulating of its jaws clamping down on a watermelon filled with blue jelly. Simple sprinkles, confetti or streamers don’t seem to cut it anymore, and these new parents have gotten very creative – and sometimes deadly.

In July of 2019, on the Australian Gold Coast, a car burst into blue flames after a reveal gone wrong. That September, a gender reveal in Texas led to a plane crash when the aircraft stalled after dumping thousands of gallons of pink water over a crop field. Just that next month in October, a grandmother was killed in Knoxville, Iowa, by shrapnel from a homemade pipe bomb meant to explode in blue smoke. In 2017, almost 50,000 acres of land in Arizona were destroyed from a brush fire that started when a gun was fired at a target filled with blue colored chalk and tannerite, a highly explosive powder. And most recently, over 8,000 acres of land in San Bernardino County, California, have now been destroyed after another pipe bomb explosion gone wrong. 

In the short time these parties have been around they have garnered a lot of attention, good and bad. Many controversies surround these get-togethers, from the dangers involved in the creative surprises to the question of whether these parties are perpetuating gender binaries. Even Karvunidis has changed her mind about them and took to Facebook and Twitter to condemn these over-the-top events. 

“Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you,” Karvunidis said.

She also shared another surprise – that her views on sex and gender have changed. 

“Who cares what gender the baby is? I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now — that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs. PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” Karvunidis said.

She and many others have found the parties are actually very restricting and that they perpetuate gender stereotypes. The parties have been known to be centered around themes like “guns vs glitter,” “tractors vs tiaras” or “ruffles vs rifles” that separate children into two distinct categories – hyper-masculine and violent or hyper-feminine and dainty – based solely on the basis of the child’s genitalia.  Before they can walk, talk or even think for themselves, they are thrust into a binary role full of constricting guidelines on what it means to be a boy or girl.

Many people have rejected this binary and are vocal about the struggle of growing up in a world so heavily focused on those restrictions. Children should be free to grow, learn and change in a welcoming environment with the option to be whoever they are. This is a struggle when there are those being pushed into ill-fitting boxes with feelings of shame for not living up to their parents’– and society’s– expectations of who they should be and how they should represent themselves. 

The very term gender reveal is problematic and comes down to the difference between the words gender and sex. Sex, in this case, means reproductive body parts and chromosomes. Gender, on the other hand, is much more complicated. Gender is a socially constructed concept and can be described as more of a spectrum. It is something that can change as a person is continually being developed and doesn’t always fall into neat categories. It’s a way for people to present themselves and define themselves – and it’s personal. Each person has to find their own way and is in charge of declaring their own gender. 

Gender expectations are stifling to everyone – even those who are not transgender. With themes like “tutus or touchdowns” and “bows or badges,” the children in the audiences of these reveals can be misled to assume that it’s wrong if they don’t fall into these stereotypes that reek of sexism. Who is to say that little girl won’t grow up to be a firefighter? Or what if that little boy finds he loves ballet? And why should any of that matter? Countless videos have ended with family members and even parents of the soon to be children extremely disappointed when their predictions of the babies gender are wrong. This can be damaging to a child’s self esteem and sense of well-being.

This debate, like anything else, is ongoing and has many different viewpoints, and there are definitely those who feel gender reveals should not be taken too seriously. Pregnancy is exciting for a lot of women, and they want to share that with others. That little bit of information on a baby’s sex is sometimes all a mother has to cling to and create an image of her future child. But there are many alternatives to a gender reveal party that are a lot less harmful – including a zodiac reveal or a birthstone reveal.

It is important when planning these events to take into account that what we should really be celebrating is life and who that baby will become – not what body parts they were born with.

Savannah Hawley, junior French and Oxbridge: Literature and Theory major, has been studying at Oxford’s Regent’s Park College. A native of Independence, Mo., Hawley studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, in the fall semester. 

“Up until the week I left for home (March 8-15), I was planning to travel for the entirety of my break from school. Everything changed rapidly, and on that Friday, March 13, I decided to come home. Within an hour I was lucky enough to get a flight that left March 15 for Kansas City. I tried to maintain my initial travel plans up until they became untenable. I realized that even if I stayed in Europe, I would not be able to travel or even leave my housing much at all. Keeping that in mind, and wanting to be a conscientious global citizen, I made the decision to come home for at least the duration of my vacation.”

The sudden impact of the virus and its severity became rapidly apparent to Hawley.

“Initially, I did not think COVID-19 would spread as far and as fast as it did. I first realized it was bad when I changed my vacation travel plans the first time. I was supposed to spend three weeks in Italy and decided to change that after seeing how badly the virus progressed in just a matter of days. Even in monitoring the situation, I wouldn’t say I realized it was bad – instead, the status of my living in the U.K. decided it was bad for me. When the United States imposed the initial travel ban to the Schengen Zone of Europe, I knew that the U.K. would not be far behind, and that the pandemic had essentially come to a forefront in the places I call home.”

From Oxford, Hawley traveled home to Independence March 15 – just before the ban on international travel to the US was extended to the UK. 

“I was not necessarily paranoid or scared of the situation, but just wanted to stay aware and considerate [during travel home]. However, when I arrived at the airport, I became highly anxious because of the way airport personnel and travelers were acting. At Heathrow airport, the security line for my terminal was longer than I and many other seasoned travelers have seen. There were people in full hazmat suits and airport workers that varied from casual to paranoid, so I didn’t know really how to feel.”

“Once in my gate, airport personnel were checking every person’s passport and questioning them to see where they had travelled. This questioning cemented my view of the outbreak’s severity, as those who have traveled to restricted zones were not allowed on my flight. However, once I arrived at the airport in Houston, there was no screening and little questioning at customs – the customs agent did not even look at my passport, despite the fact that I have been in Europe since September.”

Hawley studied in France in the fall semester and commented on what she’d heard about the situation in  the country. 

“France acted early, although with disappointing measures at first. In the early months of their dealings with the virus – when they were still among the top three infected of European countries – they banned only gatherings with more than 1,000 people and encouraged people to stay in as much as possible. In talking with my friends recently, they’ve told me that France has now gone to a full lockdown: wherein people can leave only to get essentials or do physical activity outside during designated times. As well, almost all public places like parks and monuments have been closed. My friends who were still studying in France as of January had their studies cut short due to the U.S. travel ban, not because of actions on France’s side. As a result, almost all of them were on the first flights out that they could find and are currently in self-quarantine.”

Hawley shared her thoughts on the situation in Kansas City, compared to other places around the world.

“Kansas City has the same feel to me as what I’ve been hearing from Europe and the current situation in England. We are not as strict on our lockdown but the measures are almost the same. The only major difference I’ve found is that Americans in general – not just in Kansas City – seem to be more prone to panic buying things like toilet paper and polarization on either side of the issue surrounding actions regarding the virus.”

Less than thrilled with the communication from Jewell, Hawley gave her perspective on interactions with both Jewell and the University of Oxford during the pandemic. 

“Communications from Jewell were slow at first before I came home, when I felt I needed information the most, but have since become more frequent in regards to my safe arrival to the United States. However, I have been disappointed with a lack of communication of crucial information regarding the status of my study abroad from Jewell’s end and updates that I feel Jewell should have provided.”

“Oxford University has sent out updates on an almost weekly basis as to what their actions will be – and Regent’s Park College communicates and reiterates those updates, confirming what the University says. Although, many of those updates have not contained pertinent information beyond that the University was working to make a decision. To that end, Oxford University has decided that online teaching will occur wherever possible.”

In summation, Hawley explained how she had become comforted in this tumultuous time.

“In the beginning of all the changes, I felt like I couldn’t breath or think for almost three days, as information regarding my living and studying status seemed to change every hour. Since being home and taking stock of the past few months and the uncertain future ahead, I find comfort in the fact that I’ve still managed to have amazing experiences despite future plans that have been cancelled. Spending time with my family and dogs – more time than I’ve been able to spend with them for over a year now – has been comforting and calming despite what could have been if the pandemic did not happen.”