The first batches of COVID-19 vaccine, which arrived last week to much fanfare, have been appropriately reserved for front-line health care workers and nursing home staff and residents.
That was an easy call. Healthy nurses, doctors and other health care workers are crucially important to keeping hospitals functioning amid the surge of seriously sick COVID-19 patients. Residents of nursing homes are in acute danger, accounting for 40% of the more than the 312,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.
But who’s next? It will be weeks, even months, until there are enough doses of COVID-19 vaccine available to inoculate those in the first phase. Nevertheless, the public focus is shifting to who should be next in line.
Everyone seems to have an opinion. Anyone over 65? All essential workers? Uber thinks its drivers should have a place near the front of the line because they provide transportation to health care workers. Airline unions argue that aviation workers are essential to the nation and should have the highest priority. Teachers and farmworkers and dentists and meat processors are lobbying for special consideration. And on and on.
We have an opinion, too: Stop the dying first.