Vaccination questions

At last week’s county finance meeting, board member Scott Mildbrand repeated his concern that rural Wisconsin, and Taylor County in particular, are not left behind when it comes to the rollout of vaccinations for COVID-19.

While we are assured the seeming glacial pace of the vaccination is proceeding according to plan, it is understandable to get a bit concerned. When it comes to government taking action, the focus is more often on areas with more population, proximity to the state capital, property value or political clout.

With the rural northern portion of the state lacking all of those things, any promises made by big-city bureaucrats is always taken with a healthy dose of skepticism and a watchful eye that they actually deliver on what they promise. Add to this the confusion that exists on the national level as delivery processes that should have been worked out well in advance seem to be being made up on the fly in many states.

In regard to having a plan to roll out the vaccine, Wisconsin is better off than many states, or at least it seemed to be, but there, as always, needs to be more transparency to how decisions are made at the state level. The decisions on who gets the vaccine first is challenging with policy makers needing to navigate a minefield of morals and ethics balancing the protection of health and life with getting society functioning normally again.

Initially, the state rollout is being prioritized according to a plan developed by the Centers for Disease Control with the population broken into categories that are reminiscent of the ones the Selective Service Administration uses to rank people for the draft.

The very first round, referred to as “Phase 1A,” has been focused on health care workers treating COVID-19 patients as well as older adults living in nursing homes and long-term care facilities where the virus spread has been hard to contain and especially deadly.

It was announced this week the state moved to the 1B area which includes firefighters and police officers. This makes sense, we need our responders to not become ill or carriers of the disease.

Things get murkier, and potentially more politicized as the distribution spreads into other categories. This is particularly true as the game plan got changed on the fly Tuesday morning to focus solely on getting the vaccine to those 65 and older rather than also including essential and front line workers such as those in grocery stores and teachers.

This makes sense from a purely scientific and medical approach since older individuals have had, in general, more severe levels of complications. However, judged by a social and economic impact standpoint the state’s change raises questions.

The main method of reducing the spread of the COVID-19 is staying away from other people. Since most Wisconsinites in this age group are no longer in the workforce, from a practical sense, asking retirees to remain at home a few weeks more only creates personal inconvenience for them. Having teachers, factory workers or small business owners home from work shuts down the economy costing jobs and lost wages with a cascade of negative societal impacts. Policy makers must use care that they are not prioritizing bridge parties over keeping factories running or kids in school.

Considering that, if anything, the effectiveness of the vaccines currently available are being underplayed, the solution is to get more vaccines to people and truly get mass vaccination underway. At the current rate of vaccination it will take nearly two years before all of the state’s 5.86 million residents receive at least their first vaccine shot.

Ramping up production and distribution of the vaccines until all Americans can be vaccinated must become a national priority if the virus is to be defeated. The faster this happens, the faster life can return to normal.

Last spring, leaders in Washington recognized that it would take a wartime level of commitment to combat the disease while keeping the economy from going down the drain. The production and distribution of vaccines needs to take an equal wartime footing with that effort becoming the primary domestic policy goal and pushing other issues to the back burner until COVID-19 is defeated.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.

Brian Wilson