Vaccine Roulette
So okay, let’s say you’re in charge of who gets the first doses of the vaccines for coronavirus. Wait, let’s say I get to decide who goes to the top of the line. Nothing against you, but the whole point of this exercise is determining who makes these decisions. Rumor has it there’s a bunker somewhere under the Appalachian Mountains, a safe house, for bio ethicists brought in from who knows where to make the call who goes first, decide who waits while the pandemic keeps on killing. Life and death, who plays God?
The government, that’s who. The same government half of us think is a Deep State conspiracy, the government who created this phony baloney epidemic hoax so they could force us to wear plague masks and then probably find some excuse to take our guns. That government! But … for the time being, let’s agree that I am going to decide who gets the vaccine first, who gets it next, who gets it last. Skeeter the Beneficent, All Knowing, All Seeing, All the Damn Time! Hear me, Minions!
Okay okay, never mind, just go along with this a bit. I have to decree who gets the shots first when the vaccines are shipped in containers chilled to nearly 90 degrees below zero to the various states. First off, I may pull a Trump and deny the Red States much of the first batches. They didn’t believe this pandemic was real. They don’t wear a mask. They want to party in crowded bars and go to church and attend weddings and funerals even if the funeral will eventually be their own. But … being beneficent, I will relent and divvy up the pie equally. Based on population. Unless the Red States have undocumented immigrants they didn’t want to count in the ongoing census. We’ll go along with that, send them only based on what they wanted to count. Fair is fair and Skeeter the All Seeing is nothing, if not fair.
The bio ethicists, whoever they are and wherever they came from, want to give the first batches to the first responders, the hospital personnel, the nursing homes. Okay by me, seems obvious. Wouldn’t hardly need an ethicist to make that call. The next folks in line are the older folks, probably with underlying conditions. If I can figure out my underlying condition, I’m good with that. The old farts without underlying conditions, I assume, are next with sleeves rolled up. Probably me so I’m gonna go with this choice too. Because, as you’ve already seen, I’m fair. Maybe even the fairest of the fair.
Essential workers? You bet. Personally I might put them ahead of the elderly who smoked themselves onto a ventilator, but let’s be magnanimous here, they drove buses, checked out us customers at grocery stores, put themselves at risk same as first responders. Seems only fair they get protected right away. But you know and I do too, they’ll be at the back of the line. Minimum wage earners, essential to the rest of us with money enough to spend during the pandemic. Sorry, but you folks are young mostly. Gotta save the vaccine for us geriatrics.
Hard call, but somebody’s got to make it, right? Half of us probably won’t even take the vaccine if it’s offered. Who knows what’s in that stuff? Who knows what the long term side effects are? Who knows if it’ll even work longer than a month or two? Not that it matters. The government decided not to buy extra vaccine when they had the chance and now we’re at the back of the line for more. Sure glad they’re the ones making all the decisions, not me. If you don’t trust them, well, maybe there’ll be enough vaccine for old Skeeter.
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Tags: Covid Roulette Vaccine, Who Decides Who Gets the Vaccine?, Who Gets the Vaccine?
I’m glad it’s you deciding Skeeter, because you recognize you have to start with who gets the vaccine *first*. If the Trump Administration had anything to do with it, they’d squabble over who gets it last, Mexicans, minorities, women, or immigrants, as the temperature rises -60, -40, -20… and then they’d argue over whether global shipping container warming is a hoax or not.
Warped Speed, indeed. You’re absolutely correcto about the global shipping container warning. Assuming they even want to acknowledge that the plague is real. It’s a little like voting in Georgia. They say it’s rigged but they insist the peach suckers should vote again for Senators. The pandemic is phony but they want credit for fast delivery of the cure. The President says he’s exonerated, but dollars to donuts he’ll pardon himself. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson said, but he never imagined Mighty Mouth as supreme leader.