1A, maybe

Our clinic organized COVID vaccinations for everybody involved in routine direct patient care. I only have occasional clinical responsibilities, so I did not expect to be on the list. But then the clinic director sent out an email saying that the rest of us are still classified as non-hospital healthcare workers, based on our professional license category and work setting, and are explicitly included in phase 1A of the vaccination rollout. We can't get vaccinated through the university at this point, because the university's supplies are so limited, but we can still get vaccinated.

At first I was like "That has got to be a mistake." But then I read the documentation and it does not seem to be a mistake -- it looks to me like I do meet the eligibility criteria, on paper.

Part of me finds this to be an immense relief. More of me finds it to be ethically sticky.

I could not count the number of recruiting calls and emails I've received over the past 11 months. Long-term care facilities are desperate for people right now. I always hang up the phone (politely) or delete the email and say, "you could not pay me enough money to do that job right now." The nature of the work we do in long-term care is dangerous here in the COVID era: you sit down face to face with people with dementia, who are coughing repeatedly in the middle of a COVID hatchery. (People cough at you when you're doing swallowing assessments in long-term care; that's just how it goes.) I would never have described my line of work as dangerous before. Firefighting, sure; policing, yeah; paratrooping, definitely. I had never thought of speech-language pathology as a death-in-the-line-of-duty kind of profession. It was such a shock to read that first SLP COVID obituary.

So should my colleagues in long-term care be included in phase 1A? Oh, yes, unequivocally yes.

Should I? 

Probably not.

It might be a moot question, since my county, like most counties, is struggling to meet the demand. I called the health department for more information, and got a frazzled person who didn't have information to give me. Ethicists are divided, it seems, with some saying "Shots in arms are better than shots in freezers!" and some saying "Wait your turn!" I don't feel at peace about claiming 1A status. But it doesn't take much browsing in my pandemic category to see that I also don't feel at peace about coexisting with this virus.