Commentary: Law-abiding Kansans deserve vaccine priority over violent offenders
It’s the vaccine, stupid!
Gov. Laura Kelly needs to borrow the playbook from Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and focus on what’s important right now. According to the most recent Centers for Disease Control report, Kansas ranks 49th in the country for COVID-19 vaccination of its citizens. That’s simply appalling. The only way we get our economy back open is by improving prioritization and delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Yet the governor’s idea of “priority” vaccination is a five-phase rollout that puts shots in the arms of healthy prisoners at Kansas correctional facilities — people serving time for rape, murder and other major offenses — before offering the life-saving vaccine to 16- to 64-year-olds with severe medical risks.
Law-abiding citizens deserve better. They deserve vaccination priority over violent offenders. Anything less is egregious mismanagement of a public health crisis that’s putting both the physical and fiscal health of the state on the brink of disaster.
Make no mistake, the Sedgwick County Health Department is doing the best job it can, given its constraints and slow vaccine delivery by the state. Sedgwick County’s outstanding health care workers are even braving bitter, sub-freezing temperatures to deliver vaccine to residents via its drive-through facility. They’re doing it because they know how important it is to get vulnerable populations vaccinated as quickly as possible.
The governor’s administration has proven to be nothing short of a debacle when it comes to managing large-scale critical issues. While the Kansas Department of Health and Environment claims our 49th-place ranking is inaccurate and reflects merely a “lag” of documentation about vaccine delivery, the failures of the Kelly administration during the COVID-19 crisis goes far beyond that.
As a result COVID-19, tens of thousands of Kansans are out of work, and their plight has put a spotlight on the ongoing fiasco at the Kansas Department of Labor. Desperate workers are left frustrated and lacking the benefits they deserve because they can’t get through the state’s antiquated website or reach a live person via phone.
Sadly, Kansas isn’t alone in dealing with COVID-related issues in healthcare and unemployment. But the state should be looking at alternative solutions to cope with the unprecedented influx of calls. Wichita is a call center mecca. We have plenty of highly trained call center workers and quality infrastructure to help KDOL solve its bottlenecked communications problems. All the governor has to do is ask for that help.
We have to get businesses back open full time, and get people back to work. Gov. Kelly can fix the issue by simply revising her vaccination rollout policy and working with the federal government to improve the timeliness of vaccine delivery. And she can do a better job of handling unemployment issues until life after COVID improves.
As Kansans, we have the capability within our state to fix what needs to be fixed. We just need the governor’s willingness to get it done. Our Kansas economy is too fragile to wait any longer. Because it’s all about the vaccine, stupid!