by Keisha Ray, Ph.D.
With Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna/National Institutes of Health producing a viable vaccine for COVID-19 (along with two other companies on the precipice of also producing viable vaccines) and with distribution set to begin in just a few weeks for many health care providers, people have questions about when they will receive the vaccine. The New York Times has created a vaccine calculator in which you can input information about yourself such as your age and whether you have pre-existing conditions which make you vulnerable to COVID-19, and other information to then get an estimate of when you can expect to get the vaccine. On the CDC website the agency has answered a series of questions about the vaccine, including questions about the cost of the vaccine (no cost to the individual, although some providers can charge an administration fee that can be covered by public and private health insurance or government relief fund for people without insurance). Whereas…
by Matthew Cote, MD, FACEP
As the first two major vaccinations for COVID-19 have started to be widely distributed in the United States, a disturbing trend is emerging: many healthcare workers who presumably are educated about the vaccine, are declining to receive it. While not unanticipated, the degree to which it is occurring among healthcare providers is concerning. The numbers are not trivial, with up to 40% of some healthcare workers declining the opportunity to get vaccinated as reported recently in the LA Times, Forbes, and AP News. Frontline healthcare workers as a group have the most medical knowledge and firsthand experience in dealing with people who have become infected with COVID-19. …
by Richard B. Gibson
Ensuring that healthcare resources are made available to those in the greatest need of them – be that individuals, groups, populations, or countries – is not only a matter of public health but also one of ethics. A failure to implement appropriate resources allocation, reflective of a situation’s specific demands, illustrates not only an ignorance of public health factors but also betrays ethical shortcomings. In short, those stakeholders facing the toughest healthcare challenges should be afforded the greatest number of resources.
Does this mean, if one applies this form of reasoning to the global Covid-19 vaccination strategy, it follows then that those countries facing the most virulent viral variations should be given priority access to the vaccine?…
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