Circle back to a year ago. The pandemic was raging and we all shared a desperate hope for the success of Operation Warp Speed. Every one of us faced a very personal threat from the raging virus from China. We looked to our leaders for guidance and assurance.
When we saw the vaccines come available and the state release its COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, we dutifully followed orders. We called for appointments. We registered. We registered again. We waited. It all seemed so orderly. It was also an agonizing wait. But some of us weren’t waiting. Or even getting in line. Why?
The Vaccination Plan says the state would allocate 10% of vaccine for “disproportionately impacted populations” identified through the COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI) and that mobile vans would be dispatched to deliver vaccines to some recipients where they were, according to census tracts.
From the plan: NH will, “Distribute vaccines predominately through mobile vaccination clinic sites.”
This was the result of a seismic shift in our healthcare. Overnight, America and NH ceased their allegiance to equality and shifted to a new paradigm: “Equity!” How did this happen? How did race-rationed vaccine distribution get approved and implemented?
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The answer is explained in the plan itself:
“The final approval of vaccine distribution is informed by recommendations from the Centers Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the NH Vaccine Allocation Strategy and Medical Direction Branches, the NH DHHS Commissioner and the Governor’s Office.”
The CDC guidance followed the recommendations of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices whose “overarching ethical framework for allocating COVID-19 vaccines” is that the strategy “should aim to both reduce existing disparities and avoid creating new disparities.” It also followed the guidance of the National Academies for Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and its “Framework for Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus.”
So “Equity” was the principle endorsed by the CDC, ACIP, and NASEM. Along with all of the branches of NH state government that weighed in.
Similar guidance is common in proposals in current medical and academic literature, in influential high-level policy advice from philanthropies like the Gates and Kaiser Family Foundations, as well as from the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group. The deck is stacked in favor of Equity.
The people who delegated the responsibility for calling the shots took it upon themselves to re-make our country and our state. They were deeply influenced by Critical Race Theory and they seized the opportunity to institutionalize it.
On March 15, 2021, with the release of New Hampshire’s COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, they ushered us into a world of reparations medicine. Some of them may have been unaware of the bridge they were crossing but others knew full well.
The first action was race-rationed vaccines. That occurred in at least 37 other states. The same principle was applied in other settings, with therapeutics and medical services being rationed on the same basis.
In each of these instances, authorities emphasized “prioritizing communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 due to persistent structural and systemic disadvantage and racism that contribute to avoidable shortfalls in health outcomes more generally.” The virus thus became the vehicle for imposing equity over equality.
News of this transition should have carried the media weight of an earlier era’s Papal Bull. The transition was monumental. It was worthy of all caps above the fold in every paper across the country. The media should have screamed it! But no. They turned up the quiet.
Finally, when the second national example of race-rationed medicine occurred in New York with the restriction of virus therapeutics to non-white patients, some observers began to wake up to the Woke. Their outrage has begun to cause a stir. But little noticed in the earlier example of vaccine rationing was the call-out by one citizen in NH. She blew a whistle and lit a candle in hopes of illuminating the darkness.
She was not a medical professional or the head of a major organization or association of any sort. She was instead the lowest ranking employee in a NH liquor and wine outlet in Conway. And part-time besides. But she knew something was terribly amiss and she was determined to challenge how vaccine allocations were made and speak out against race-based rationing in our healthcare.
She took it on herself to confront her supervisors and expose what the NY Post simply calls “Racism!” This is her story.
Skip’s note: this article was sent to us hoping that we would publish it; we are. However, given its extreme length (and that’s saying something from the person that generally “writes long”), we will be serializing it over the course of the next few days. Lightly edited to make it more “bloggish”. A story in many Parts.
