Editor:
The booming, authoritative voice of the coxswain was clear in the dim emergency lights as they made their way to the life boats.
"Women, children, professional hockey players and private school students first!"
A meek voice called out, "but, but what about"
"OK - hospital board members in behind the hockey players. Everyone else will have to wait their turn!"
Those who arranged for queue jumping vaccinations in the Lower Mainland and in Alberta deserve our contempt. Private school administrators, hospital board members and even professional hockey team owners and managers understand the clearly published priorities for access to the vaccination. I'm sure they also understand that priority goes to those at risk of serious complications, not those with some notionally increased risk of exposure. Their excuses for not following the priorities show breathtaking hubris; neither they nor the public believe them.
The health care workers -doctors and nurses - who administered the vaccinations also showed enormous bad judgement and lack of character. Were they afraid to stand up to their employers, or were they so self-centred that they couldn't see the need to protect the most vulnerable?
At the risk of sounding naive, we have a social contract in Canada -access to medical care is based on need, not on influence or the ability to pay. Every vaccination that went into a queue-jumping hockey player, hospital board member or private school student was paid for by the Canadian taxpayer with that understanding.
The doctors, nurses, managers and administrators who arranged for healthy men and women to jump the queue ahead of the vulnerable owe the citizens of Canada an apology.
Keith Maxwell
Sechelt
