The Illinois Department of Public Health last week announced a new program focused on getting those age 65 and up vaccinated.
Since at least last April 2020 we’ve written here that the expert opinion that seemed most sensible called for targeted protection for those truly at risk. That means primarily the elderly, since 89% of COVID deaths in Illinois have been those 60 and up. Instead, Illinois and the federal government have generally treated COVID as if it’s a broad risk to the general population, which was used to justify a broad shutdown of the economy.
Vaccination priority has included seniors in Phase 1B priority, but that priority was heavily diluted by including politicians, teachers, the young and healthy who face no real risk and those already immune through prior infection. Most importantly, the priority for seniors was ruined by an endlessly frustrating appointment system that seniors in particular could not navigate.
So now, as vaccines are becoming more easily available, Illinois has decided that seniors need special attention. Ask yourself this: What’s different now? If it’s sensible to target seniors now why wasn’t that true earlier?
Better late than never, but it seems like an admission that earlier policy was wrong, which it was.
-Mark Glennon
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
The unions are more powerful than the old geezers.
Because the Gestapo never let’s the fear a good pandemic produces go to waste. People think that Nazism cant come back here, it can. Masks are just a practice exercise for police tactics, wait until you have to show your papers, your home is monitored, worship shut down, the right to self defense prohibited. It is all coming to America, because the people will give up their freedom. People are demonstrating that they are afraid to not wear their masks, a little thing, you really think people afraid of shedding a mask will one day stand up to Nazi police… Read more »
Only in Illinois. I’ve traveled through wisconsin quite a bit this year, and despite the local authorities demanding compliance, most residents don’t seem to care at all. I was at one local dive bar and no one wore masks. It was the first time I had been inside a bar in a year and it was like CV did not exist up there (they had low case loads in this county). I was on the other side of the state, and despite the mask requests, people took them off the first opportunity they had. My point is that some places… Read more »
It makes you wonder how government agencies would handle distribution of food?
Or healthcare.
I would venture to say the generation(s) that followed the Baby Boomers
(Gen X, Y, etc). never learned and retained their history lessons….regarding ethnic, racial and sociocultural discrimination…..based on their current “virtue signalling,”
etc.
The Illinois vaccine rollout seems to have been shaped more by race politics than by age, and that appears to be where voters are at these days.