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Expert tells NY Times: Elderly white people shouldn't get coronavirus vaccine priority in order to 'level playing field' with minorities
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Expert tells NY Times: Elderly white people shouldn't get coronavirus vaccine priority in order to 'level playing field' with minorities

The experts also said teachers shouldn't get vaccine priority because they're white

The COVID-19 vaccine rolled out this week, and now there is a debate about which groups should be a priority on the coronavirus vaccine waiting list. The New York Times attempted to answer the question about the COVID-19 priority list in an article titled "The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First?"

The article featured health experts, economists, and epidemiologists to give their insight into who should move to the front of the line for the COVID-19 vaccine. Much to the shock of many readers, the experts considered race when deciding who received priority in receiving the potentially life-saving vaccine.

Dr. Peter Szilagyi, a committee member and a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, declared, "The issue of ethics is very significant, very important for this country, and clearly favors the essential worker group because of the high proportion of minority, low-income and low-education workers among essential workers."

Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times, "It is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities."

"Older populations are whiter, " Schmidt told the paper. "Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit."

Schmidt proclaimed that essential workers should be given priority for the vaccine over the elderly, even though people aged 75-84 have a chance 220 times higher of dying from coronavirus than younger adults, and anyone over the age of 85 has a chance 630 times higher, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, also hinted that the race of a person should determine who should or should not get priority on the coronavirus waiting list. Lipsitch said that teachers shouldn't be considered essential workers, "if a central goal of the committee is to reduce health inequities."

"Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees," Lipsitch told the Times.

Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, asserted that teachers should be prioritized because it would allow people to get back to work with reliable child care at schools.

"And if you think generally about people who have jobs where they can't telework, they are disproportionately Black and brown," Gould said. "They'll have more of a challenge when child care is an issue."

Twitter user Jason Compson was one of the first people to point out the concerning racial aspects of the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine found in the New York Times article.

BlazeTV personality Dave Rubin tore apart the article, "Just The NY Times quoting a doctor who wants to kill older white people for political purposes. (Which was the next obvious step of the garbage The NY Times has been pushing for years.) 'Expert in ethics' doesn't mean what it used to."

BlazeTV's Allie Beth Stuckey of the "Relatable" podcast, pointed out, "This is so insanely evil. Please, woke Christians, do go on about how Critical Race Theory is just a bogeyman made up by the right that doesn't pose any real threat. Tell me again about how Christian Nationalism is our biggest threat."

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote, "Truly disgusting. Approved eugenics. Elderly are most at risk and should be first in line for a vaccine. The color of their skin is immaterial. What has happened to the medical profession?"

One commenter replied, "This thread shows there is something seriously rotten at the NY Times. The attempts to assign values to people's lives purely by skin color are unethical, immoral, and completely backwards."

Another person noted, "Just a little peek into government run healthcare right here."

The New York Times admitted that governors along with state and local health officials will ultimately decide who gets the coronavirus vaccine first and are not required to follow CDC guidelines.

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