Equity vs. public health

How quickly the politics of equity overtake public health.

Virginia Mercury has a headline: “Hospitals have gotten the lion’s share of Virginia’s early vaccine shipments — raising concerns over equity”

This shows how history can be forgotten with lightning speed.

Two things to note:

1. There is no approved vaccine. We only have vaccines that have been authorized for emergency use.

2. Because this vaccine is so new and not yet approved, distribution originally took place only in hospitals because they wanted to make sure there were resources available in case someone had an allergic reaction to the vaccine.

By virtue of the vaccination numbers increasing and successful vaccinations outpacing adverse events, the second bit of caution has been discarded, and now we have mass vaccination sites.

Hint: There is no emergency room only feet away if you're at a mass vaccination site like a stadium or sporting venue. If you have an allergic reaction, one needs to hope an ambulance is nearby and on call.

If we can marginalize caution for the potentially allergic in the name of pushing the equity agenda, who needs to understand the history of why things were done a certain way? After all, we can also use this to beat up on public health departments for closing off a data feature, even though that feature was used to present data without context.

Journalists: How about putting aside your agenda and know more about the context and history of the issues you're covering?