Joseph Sabino Mistick: Thanks to vaccine, we’re making sauce again
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It was a simple question on social media — and I weighed in with over 700,000 others — but it is a sure sign that many of us are breathing a little easier now that the covid-19 vaccines are taking hold.
Here’s what triggered the great debate: Should sugar be used in spaghetti sauce to soften the acidity of tomatoes and slightly sweeten the sauce?
For too long, that pot of sauce on the stove, simmering for hours, filling the house with those familiar smells of family and tradition, was hard to even talk about. In the darkest days of the pandemic, social media was all about anxiety and struggle and loss. As we were forced to live apart, it hurt to remember those things that bring us together, but that has started to change.
In the great spaghetti sauce debate, thousands of grandmas and mamas and aunts were cited as the final authority on making the sauce, and each one was proclaimed the world’s greatest cook. Some swore by white or brown sugar or a shot of anisette to soften the tomato flavor; others used a whole or chopped carrot. Every technique was a beloved family secret.
We now have the freedom to focus on the sweet pleasures of life instead of survival, and we owe it all to science. It took nearly 30 years for a flu vaccine to be developed after the 1918 influenza pandemic. The 2014 Ebola vaccine took more than five years.
The covid-19 vaccine was developed and tested by the world’s greatest scientists in 12 months. Because of that miracle, in many parts of the country, we can safely return to our families and traditions, and we can hug each other and break bread again. But things are not good everywhere.
With the delta variant of the virus sweeping the nation, infections are on the rise in those states that have low vaccination rates — Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas and others. Outbreaks are gathering steam, and the unvaccinated are at risk of infection and death.
Even worse, young people are at a higher risk. Former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb has told CNBC, “It’s just math that if more kids get infected, even if the rate of bad outcomes in kids is very low, more kids are going to have bad outcomes because more of them are getting infected.”
There are a lot of reasons why people refuse to get vaccinated. Some are simply scared or natural contrarians. Some, both right and left, have a sincere distrust of the motives and practices of drug companies and government.
But others are following politicians who have stupidly made this a partisan political issue. You can bet your own life on what those politicians say, but it is not fair to bet the lives of your children and grandchildren on their claims.
Until you get vaccinated, you can’t really look forward to family dinners again. And how to make your sauce is the least of your worries.
One last point. Putting sugar in the sauce would be met with shrieks in our house. We’re a whole carrot family, added at the beginning and removed at the end. That’s how my grandma did it, and she was the best cook in the world.