Thinking Citizen Blog — Who Exactly Should Get the Covid Vaccine First?

Thinking Citizen Blog — Thursday is Health, Health Care and Global Health Policy Day

Today’s Topic — Who exactly should get the Covid vaccine first? Who is really an “essential worker”? How will states decide?

Where should residents of long term care facilities be put in the ranking? And how about prisoners? Should the prevention of death be the top, immediate priority? Or should it be the prevention of spread? How about teachers? What about disparate racial impact? Who should decide? Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.

REDUCING DEATH RATES VERSUS REDUCING TRANSMISSION

1. The CDC seems to be prioritizing the reduction of transmission.

2. The WHO on the other hand puts the prevention of death first.

3. States are not required to follow the CDC.

SOCIAL JUSTICE AS A FACTOR

1. “Older populations are whiter. Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.” (Harald Schmidt, University of Pennsylvania)

2. “Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, argued that teachers should not be included as essential workers, if the central goal of the committee is to reduce health inequities.”

3. “Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and have college degrees,” he said.

NB: How many people will try to “jump the line”? How many will succeed?

NEVADA VERSUS LOUISIANA — prison guards, teachers, food processing

1. “Louisiana’s preliminary plan, for example, puts prison guards and food processing workers ahead of teachers and grocery employees.”

2. “Nevada’s prioritizes education and public transit workers over those in retail and food processing.”

BACKGROUND

1. 70% of the American workforce are classified “essential.”

2. 42% are classified “frontline” (can’t work from home.)

3. Children under the age of 16 are not eligible for the vaccine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-vaccine-first.html

Atul Gawande on Coronavirus Vaccines and Prospects for Ending the Pandemic

PDF with headlines — Google Drive

YOUR TURN

Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history…. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.

This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important.