Member-only story
Skipping the Vaccine Line and Other Covid-19 Conundrums
If you have the chance to snatch up a vaccine, do you take it?
We all know the stats: Black folks are more susceptible to Covid-19 but currently have less access to the actual vaccines. The reasons for both of these things can be boiled down to systemic racism, so we don’t need to delve into that for the millionth time. What is curious to me though, is the idea of vaccine shaming Black and Brown folks who have the opportunity to get their own.
I mean, if the vaccine needs to be administered and there are extras and you are taking grandma to get her shot and you are the last folks of the day and a vaccine is about to expire and is available to you provided you take it in the next 10 minutes, would you take it? Or would you fall back and say they should try to get someone off the website to drive in immediately and take it in the next, now, nine minutes? If you take that vaccine have you jumped the line? Or are you being responsible in taking the opportunity to get a vaccine so it won’t go to waste?
That said, it seems that the people who are line jumping via bribes and being married to the right people are largely not Black and Brown. USA Today detailed one person’s account of that perfectly here. But that doesn’t mean that some of us aren’t taking advantage…
