Who Gets a Seat in the Life Boat?

Right now, the COVID-19 vaccine is a rationed thing. This means that nine people are in a boat built for four, so five people need to make other plans, strip a life jacket out of another survivor’s hands, or prepare to be lunch for a sea creature.

We’re pretty clear who ought to stay in the boat. Health care workers need to get the safest seats because, good Lord, they have been facing COVID-19 every day in all its hideous glory and haven’t quit. People in nursing homes, yes, of course, they need to be saved because they shouldn’t have to suffer the dreadful death of this disease on top of whatever else put them in the nursing home. And then it gets murky. Who else should stay in the boat and who should have to tread water until another boat comes by?

Being an older adult, actually in a demographic where the mortality rate from COVID-19 is pretty startlingly high, my reflex is to shove every younger person out of the boat, thereby belying, I guess, the legitimacy of my claim that my age has made me super vulnerable. I’d do better to curl up in a corner of the rubber raft and weep into a wadded-up lacy handkerchief. Pity might get me a safe seat faster than my enviable brute force. Only kidding.

So I’m pretty anxious to get the vaccine. First, because I’m pretty anxious, meaning that I have a lot of COVID-19 dreams that involve finding myself in a packed restaurant where the person in the chair at the next table is bumping into me and then I remember, with just explosive dismay, that I am in a crowd with NO MASK. I am also leading a severely restricted existence. It is fun but very wee. I don’t need to describe it except to say there are a lot of dogs, parks, Zoom meetings, writing, drinking, and watching Netflix. Grand plans of traversing the country – the Travels with Charley vision that I’ve held out in front of my nose like a fake rabbit on a greyhound track – well, those plans are shelved. Worse, they’re shelved while the clock is ticking. Ah, you say, everyone’s clock is ticking and to that I say, NOT EVERYONE IS 72.

Still, the middle of the night voice that is my conscience says that there are plenty of folks who should get vaccinated before me. Prisoners, people in shelters, folks who can’t protect themselves. They ought to get a seat in the boat. A guy in a cell or a mom in a shelter, well, they’re sitting ducks for COVID-19. There needs to be a general classification of “people who can’t protect themselves” and they need to be given the sweetest seats in the boat.

Awake last night for long minutes looking out our bedroom window at the street light illuminating the snow, I thought about the concept of worthiness. Are we deciding about vaccine priorities based on who is worthy or who is most vulnerable or both? Am I worthy because I’m 72 or vulnerable for the same reason? I don’t know. I know this. I’ll advocate for people who are most vulnerable but I’ll be first in line when they say it’s my turn and if that is a contradictory stance, logically inconsistent, or morally deficient, I will apologize and pledge to do better, row more, catch more fish, collect rainwater in my hat to share with the others in the boat. But I will come early, be first in line, with my sleeve already rolled up.

It’s a truly weird time. Nothing is simple.