I am very grateful not to have the responsibility for deciding who goes first for the coronavirus vaccine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions. For the most part, this blog stays with the aim of its title and addresses reading and writing, leaving the arithmetic and political issues to other sources. Now and again, I run across an issue I just can’t leave alone and this is one.
I am hearing it discussed on almost every newscast, as it should be, so that we are ready when it comes. The first group seems to come in for agreement as health care worker superheroes fall into a similar category as the often given airline personnel instructions for caregivers to put on their own masks first, not out of selfishness, but for the good of the child. If the caregiver is not safe, they cannot care for the defenseless child. The principle applies to medical caregivers as well. If they are not safe, they can’t care for the rest of us. These are followed closely, if not ranked together, by those in long-term care facilities as being the most vulnerable because of their exposure and limited choices of other safe places to go.
After that the picture becomes unclear. The decisions become based on how essential the workers are to the general population taken in balance with how vulnerable the population is. At this point, it would be nice if the wisdom of Solomon could be channeled. If I were in charge of the world, I would include in the most essential those who, by nature of their jobs, interacet with the largest number of people simply because that cuts the spread. I would give priority to people whose jobs entail necessary services for the general public, beginning with educators but also including others like postal workers, garbage collectors, and grocery baggers who are delivering orders to vehicles of vulnerable people who shelter in place. High on my list of the most vulnerable people, I would add those who already have serious and chronic medical conditions along with the residents in long-term facilities.
Some of us (like me) can shelter in place a bit longer, knowing our turn for the vaccine is coming. Most of us who have carried our AARP cards for a while have lived through worse things than having to stay at home. At the same time, I think when our group is called, we need to take our turn, even if it doesn’t agree with our own idea as the best order. Most likely, Solomon will not show up, and we will question some of the decisions about who goes first. However, we don’t want to wind up like polite Mississippians at a four-way stop, each signaling for the other one to go first with a result that they all take much longer to get through the stop sign than necessary. The quicker we follow the instructions from the medical decisionmakers, the quicker we get past this.