Today is Tuesday, December
15, and it is the 350th day of an absolutely heinous year that I think we will
all be more than happy to dispose of in just two weeks’ time.
Yesterday, the first coronavirus vaccines were given out to health care workers, and the first one in the country was given to a nurse from Queens.
Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, made history when she received the shot, and we applaud her for her actions and hope that she suffers no ill affects by having herself injected.
But as usual, politics crept into this accomplishment, souring the entire thing and making me wonder about the pandemic, and how politics will continue to shape its rise and its fall.
Lindsay happens to be a woman of color, She was administered the vaccine by a female doctor, also a woman of color.
I didn’t think much of it, but then Lindsay said that she did not know that she would be the first until she came into work that morning, and that her taking the shot demonstrates that the people of color community should welcome the vaccine, not shun it.
After this pronouncement, while I still applaud her for her actions, I don’t believe that she didn’t know that she would be the first one to get it, nor did I appreciate her political statement.
You just know that she was chosen because of her skin color, because many in the black and brown communities have been complaining for months that they are not being accommodated in any way by the availability of testing, in particular where person for person, their communities are being disproportionately hurt more by the virus than any other community—meaning the white community.
Lindsay—who appears to have a slight accent, and might be not only a woman of color, but Haitian or Jamaican or some other similar ethnic background—was chosen by her color to receive this shot first, to not only demonstrate to all that the shot is valid, but to show minority communities that they have not been forgotten.
You might say, “So what’s the big deal”” but remember, our leaders and the media have been touting since Day One that “we are all in this together,” yet they constantly put up roadblocks to actually carrying out that credo.
If “we are all in this together,” as they say, why are we constantly being assaulted by moves that show that we really aren’t?
Early on, the coronavirus became politicized when our leaders told us that minority communities were more apt to get the virus because of their living/working situations, as if the virus decided what human beings it was going to go after.
We were told that these communities had inadequate care, could not get what they needed to protect themselves, and that they were at a disadvantage in combating this disease.
Funny, I have found in my own family that the disease does not discriminate against races, whether you are white, black, brown, yellow, orange or purple with pink polka dots.
My white, middle class sister got it and got it bad, and according to the media, she had all the advantages in not getting it.
And if she got it, she had all the advantages in warding it off and making it less than it could have been.
Yes, someone should have told her that when she was wheezing and could not catch her breath.
The worry while we now have the vaccine is that people of color will again disproportionately lose out, because they simply won’t have the availability of the vaccine as whites do, but cities are jumping over themselves to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
And remember, health care workers like Lindsay will be the among the first ones to get the vaccine, and there is a large minority population within those ranks, so white or black or brown or yellow, that group will get the vaccines, and rightly so, get it first before anyone else.
The general population, whether white, black, yellow or brown, will not be able to get the vaccine until the spring, so not only will the majority of whites not be able to get this vaccine until then, but the majority of blacks, browns and yellows won’t be able to get the vaccines either.
So why has this been made a racial/political issue by our elected leaders? Have they bowed to pressure from the leaders of those groups, who feel that their respective groups are always put at the bottom of the barrel in American life? Are they looking for future votes?
I don’t know, but this divisiveness, created by our leaders and the media, has to stop and has to stop right now.
If “we are all in this together,” let’s live that credo to the max, and not just say those six words, but practice what those six words preach.
I applaud Lindsay for being the first one in our nation to get the shot, and I applaud her as a front-line health care worker and as a human being.
Why bring race into it?
Again, “we are all in this together,” and that is really all that counts, isn’t it?
Yesterday, the first coronavirus vaccines were given out to health care workers, and the first one in the country was given to a nurse from Queens.
Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, made history when she received the shot, and we applaud her for her actions and hope that she suffers no ill affects by having herself injected.
But as usual, politics crept into this accomplishment, souring the entire thing and making me wonder about the pandemic, and how politics will continue to shape its rise and its fall.
Lindsay happens to be a woman of color, She was administered the vaccine by a female doctor, also a woman of color.
I didn’t think much of it, but then Lindsay said that she did not know that she would be the first until she came into work that morning, and that her taking the shot demonstrates that the people of color community should welcome the vaccine, not shun it.
After this pronouncement, while I still applaud her for her actions, I don’t believe that she didn’t know that she would be the first one to get it, nor did I appreciate her political statement.
You just know that she was chosen because of her skin color, because many in the black and brown communities have been complaining for months that they are not being accommodated in any way by the availability of testing, in particular where person for person, their communities are being disproportionately hurt more by the virus than any other community—meaning the white community.
Lindsay—who appears to have a slight accent, and might be not only a woman of color, but Haitian or Jamaican or some other similar ethnic background—was chosen by her color to receive this shot first, to not only demonstrate to all that the shot is valid, but to show minority communities that they have not been forgotten.
You might say, “So what’s the big deal”” but remember, our leaders and the media have been touting since Day One that “we are all in this together,” yet they constantly put up roadblocks to actually carrying out that credo.
If “we are all in this together,” as they say, why are we constantly being assaulted by moves that show that we really aren’t?
Early on, the coronavirus became politicized when our leaders told us that minority communities were more apt to get the virus because of their living/working situations, as if the virus decided what human beings it was going to go after.
We were told that these communities had inadequate care, could not get what they needed to protect themselves, and that they were at a disadvantage in combating this disease.
Funny, I have found in my own family that the disease does not discriminate against races, whether you are white, black, brown, yellow, orange or purple with pink polka dots.
My white, middle class sister got it and got it bad, and according to the media, she had all the advantages in not getting it.
And if she got it, she had all the advantages in warding it off and making it less than it could have been.
Yes, someone should have told her that when she was wheezing and could not catch her breath.
The worry while we now have the vaccine is that people of color will again disproportionately lose out, because they simply won’t have the availability of the vaccine as whites do, but cities are jumping over themselves to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
And remember, health care workers like Lindsay will be the among the first ones to get the vaccine, and there is a large minority population within those ranks, so white or black or brown or yellow, that group will get the vaccines, and rightly so, get it first before anyone else.
The general population, whether white, black, yellow or brown, will not be able to get the vaccine until the spring, so not only will the majority of whites not be able to get this vaccine until then, but the majority of blacks, browns and yellows won’t be able to get the vaccines either.
So why has this been made a racial/political issue by our elected leaders? Have they bowed to pressure from the leaders of those groups, who feel that their respective groups are always put at the bottom of the barrel in American life? Are they looking for future votes?
I don’t know, but this divisiveness, created by our leaders and the media, has to stop and has to stop right now.
If “we are all in this together,” let’s live that credo to the max, and not just say those six words, but practice what those six words preach.
I applaud Lindsay for being the first one in our nation to get the shot, and I applaud her as a front-line health care worker and as a human being.
Why bring race into it?
Again, “we are all in this together,” and that is really all that counts, isn’t it?
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