A Christmas miracle
Hooray, compromise! On Sunday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) voted 13-1 to take a balanced approach in its recommendation as to which populations should be next to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
To date, the committee has given priority to the nation’s 21 million health care workers and nursing home residents, who represent a third of all coronavirus deaths. Two other populations vied for second priority. One was the elderly, age 65 and older, who are at higher risk of dying if infected with COVID-19. The second group included “essential” workers, those who must risk infection in jobs that are face-to-face with the public.
Each population group had its arguments. Lobbyists for the seniors said their group comprised an outsized fraction of COVID-19 fatalities. Worker advocates noted, however, that these seniors were mostly white and had benefited from good medical care during their lifetimes. That is why, it was argued, they were seniors in the first place. Protections needed to be afforded to workers, which included minorities, who have been disproportionately sickened by the coronavirus, these advocates said.
A debate raged. Members of the committee got testy over accusations that they were handing out the COVID-19 vaccines in less than a racially neutral way. Committee chairman Dr. Jose Romero defended the CDC. “Our attempt has been always to achieve equitable ethical and fair distribution of that resource,” he said. “We have never targeted a specific ethnic nor racial group for receipt of the vaccine.”
In the end, committee members found middle ground. They agreed to provide the vaccine to people older than 74 and to about 30 million frontline “essential” workers, which would include teachers, emergency responders and grocery store employees.
In coming to this consensus, the committee said a third group should be next in line. These people would include 32 million between the ages of 65 and 74, 110 million people ages 16 to 64 with high-risk medical conditions and other “essential” workers, including people who work in restaurants, construction, law and transportation.
Is the committee’s work perfect? Probably not. Professors of ethics could likely quibble about what the committee came up with.
The committee’s decision, however, is reasonable and, in this era of intense polarization and non-stop bickering, something like a Christmas miracle.
It would have been easy for factions on the committee, like all other groups in Washington, D.C., to dig in, refuse to budge and halt all progress.
Of course, then, people would have died.
We are pleased that at least one panel in our nation’s capital puts a priority on getting something done for the American people. Maybe this “disease” can infect the rest of our federal policy makers.
This past week, Gov. Tony Evers’ Blue Ribbon Commission on Rural Prosperity released its 49-page report.
The document is comprehensive and thoughtful, but, as a whole, doesn’t deliver. It isn’t nearly bold enough. It doesn’t take the Wisconsin rural crisis seriously enough. It points out all of the problems we have known about for decades, but offers little in the way of solutions.
We like some of the proposals in the report. It would get rid of levy limits on local governments. That’s good. It would expand broadband. Also good.
The report, however, fails to deal squarely with the collapse of two staples of the rural Wisconsin economy, the dairy business and the paper industry.
In the last election, people in rural Wisconsin didn’t look to Madison for help digging out of the current rural crisis. Instead, they voted for a man named Trump. Some local townships favored him by 80 percent margins.
State officials know they need to win back the trust and support of rural Wisconsin residents to stay in power. They need to step up their game.