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Vaccine Priorities: Politics and Ethics

Gregg Gonsalves on Covid-19, plus John Nichols on politics in 2020.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener

December 30, 2020

A staff nurse at the Royal Cornwall Hospital prepares to administer Covid-19 vaccinations.(Hugh Hastings / Getty Images)

Vaccine priorities: political and ethical questions about who comes first, after health care workers. Gregg Gonsalves considers the arguments; the choice is between reducing the death toll, which means giving priority to the oldest people—and keeping society functioning, which means giving priority to essential workers. And the Global South must be included in all vaccine distribution plans—because “the virus doesn’t care where you live.”

Also: 2020 in review: the political year began with Bernie winning early primaries and losing the rest; then came the summer of Black Lives Matter, with the largest protest movement in American history; and then Election Day, without fighting in the streets or the courts overturning the results. John Nichols comments.

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Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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