Article published November 20, 2009
Ditching the flu-shot line
IT MUST be nice to be a government employee and not have to live by the same rules as the rest of us lesser mortals. How else does one explain the fact that members of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner’s staff were offered, and many accepted, swine flu shots last week, even as pregnant women, children, and others at high risk for dying from the H1N1 virus, continue to wait for more vaccine to arrive?
It is outrageous and wholly inappropriate that Mayor Finkbeiner and his staff were shown such blatant favoritism in access to the scarce vaccine, administration of which has been plagued by production delays and spotty and erratic distribution.
Other people designated by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as being at highest risk have had to wait for hours in long lines to be inoculated against swine flu, when the vaccine was available at all.
But not Mr. Finkbeiner’s chief of staff, Robert Reinbolt, and other Finkbeiner aides. The Toledo-Lucas County Health Department actually brought the vaccine to them. Mr. Reinbolt said he received his swine flu shot before mothers of infants under 6 months of age because, as safety director, he’s considered a “first responder” in matters of public safety.
But the only first responders listed in CDC recommendations, which the county health department follows, are health-care and emergency medical services personnel “with direct patient contact.” We doubt that being “first responder” to the tirades of Toledo’s volatile mayor is what the CDC had in mind.
In fact, both the 70-year-old mayor, who has had heart problems, and Police Chief Mike Navarre have more legitimate claim to the vaccine than the staffers who accepted favored treatment.
But neither accepted a shot.
The CDC, in its wisdom, has determined that some people should endure increased risk of contracting swine flu so that others more likely to die from it can be vaccinated first.
No one, not the CDC, the Ohio Department of Health, nor the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department, has said that government workers constitute an exempted class.
We are surprised that county health officials made the vaccine available and ashamed of city workers who took advantage of their position to cut in line ahead of people who need the shots more.
Every day that ordinary people want inoculations but can’t get them means lost votes for the Obama Administration, which undoubtedly is going to be blamed for this botched program just as George W. Bush was blamed for the Hurricane Katrina debacle.
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