Who is an indispensable person? That is the question being asked by government, medical specialists, and everybody else as we try to determine in which order Americans should receive the vaccine.
The CDC recommends that those in healthcare and residents of senior citizen facilities and their employees are first, and we are proceeding along those lines. From there it goes to first responders, seniors that are 75 years and older, and essential workers. The New York Times reports that there are 80 million Americans that fit the term essential.
Cops, schoolteachers, bus drivers and grocery store workers all have a claim to be “one of the first.” Uber drivers are lobbying, as are those working in food production, to be bumped to the top of the ever-growing list. Determining who should be the first among us is beginning to sound as if we all live in Lake Wobegon “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
I am a senior with a pre-existing condition which is supposed to mean that I am ahead of many others. It is true that if I do contract the virus, I have less of a chance of survival as someone who is not as old and decrepit. I am not sure as a gadfly writing on our local governments that I would qualify as essential. Yet it is nice to believe that I am indispensable.
This Darwinian way that we are looking at prioritizing vaccine distribution appears to me to be unchristian in this season in which we celebrate the birth of Christ. Much of the way America has prioritized policy for decades has been that way. We have moved away from looking at individuals to classifying us into groups.
Classifications are easy to understand but most problems are not that easy to solve. Classifications are a way to divide us. That in and of itself is a not how Jesus saw us. He saw us as individual souls deserving of His grace and love.
You do not have to be a Christian to think in terms of each American’s individuality. That is why trying to prioritize vaccination by occupation or age is so difficult. Why is a 25-year-old police officer more deserving than a 50-year-old biologist working in a lab?
I have no ready answer on how to choose who goes first. In the Gospel of Matthew 25:40, we are commanded to provide sustenance to the poorest of humanity because in doing so we are providing it to the Lord. We are committed to providing the vaccine to all. It is determining who will be last in line that is so hard.
For you see the question should not come down to who is indispensable but which of us has been deemed dispensable. Who wants to be the last American to die in this pandemic?
Again found in Matthew verse 20:16 is something that explains that choice ultimately: “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.“
