Viewpoints: Rollout Of Vaccines Leaves Out Too Many Black Americans; How Can Anyone Brag About Such Government Failure?

CNN: Black Americans Are Bearing The Brunt Of The Pandemic. Here's How To Make The Vaccine Rollout More Equitable 
Covid-19 has disproportionately devastated the Black community. Black Americans are dying from the coronavirus at nearly twice the rate of White Americans -- and have been hospitalized nearly three times as often, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black Americans, who make up a disproportionate share of essential workers, are also shouldering greater socioeconomic burdens during the pandemic. You would think that one way to bring back a measure of racial justice would be to work vigorously to eliminate this disparity when it comes to who can get the vaccine. (Bhaskar Chakravorti, 2/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Prayer And Science Led Me To The Vaccine
Like many African-Americans, I had a great deal of trepidation about the Covid-19 vaccine. But last week my wife and I completed our course of vaccinations. My experience as a pastor and leader in the black community led me to believe it was the right thing to do. Opinion polls show that African-Americans have the greatest hesitation of any group about the Covid vaccine. (T.D. Jakes, 2/25)

Miami Herald: Miami-Dade’s Black Residents Finally Get Their Shot. It’s A Start — And It’s About Time
Suddenly, everyone wants to reach Black seniors to help them get COVID-19 vaccines in South Florida. First the federal government said it is opening a mass vaccination site at Miami Dade College’s North Campus to reach more of the Black community, starting next week. Then the state followed on Thursday with six smaller sites it will open in Black and Hispanic communities, including one in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood. ...It’s particularly hard to understand, two months into this process, why Black seniors are only now getting this rush of attention. (2/26)

Dallas Morning News: Government Failure On A Grand Scale
There has been a lot of talk about a market failure that left millions of Texans in the dark last week. While we await the results of investigations into precisely what made the lights go out, there is another massive failure unfolding in slow motion in our communities — one that should be noted and corrected. We’re talking, of course, about vaccine distribution. Giving a shot is a relatively simple task. It takes only a few seconds and virtually everyone can get it safely. So giving millions of shots should have been a relatively straightforward endeavor. The operational obstacles here are about scale, not complexity. The goal should have been efficiency and clarity. Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down. At least, that’s the way it should have been. (2/26)

Stat: Primary Care Could Be Biden's Secret Weapon Against Covid-19 
For a small-town physician, being given a supply of the Covid-19 vaccine can make a world of difference. In Cut Off, La., 30 of primary care physician Gary Birdsall’s patients have died from Covid-19. In his small rural community, they were neighbors and friends. (Farzad Mostashari and Emily Maxson, 2/26)

The New York Times: Companies Shouldn’t Require Employees To Get Vaccines
Since banishing the coronavirus from workplaces will be a key to opening the economy — and keeping it open — some companies are considering whether to require their workers to be vaccinated. The chief executive of United Airlines has said he favors making the shots mandatory, and several cruise lines will ask their crews to be vaccinated before returning to work. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said it is legal for companies to require their employees to get coronavirus vaccines. But these types of mandates are best imposed by governments, not by private companies. (Katie Attwell and Mark Navin, 2/26)

Los Angeles Times: My Wife Is Vaccinated. I'm Not. The Difference Feels Huge
In my house, we have a problem. My wife has been vaccinated; I haven’t. Am I envious? Of course I am. Resentful? Yeah, some of that too. When she came home all cheerful after her second COVID-19 vaccine shot last week, I couldn’t help feel that she had crossed safely to the other side of a giant chasm, while I remained at the edge of the cliff. Later, when she complained of a headache and some chills from the second shot, I was, perhaps, a tad less sympathetic than I could have been. For a year we’ve been housebound together. But suddenly she was eligible for her shots and I was not. And now (or presumably very soon), she’ll be able to traipse off to a restaurant or a rave or an orgy or a national insurrection, while I’ll still be cowering at home hiding from the virus. (Nicholas Goldberg, 2/26)

The New York Times: The Secret Life Of A Coronavirus 
Last spring, coyotes strolled down the streets of San Francisco in broad daylight. Pods of rarely seen pink dolphins cavorted in the waters around Hong Kong. In Tel Aviv, jackals wandered a city park, a herd of mountain goats took over a town in Wales, and porcupines ambled through Rome’s ancient ruins. As the canals in Venice turned strangely clear, cormorants started diving for fish, and Canada geese escorted their goslings down the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, passing empty shops displaying Montblanc pens and Fendi handbags. Nature was expanding as billions of people were retreating from the Covid-19 pandemic. The change was so swift, so striking that scientists needed a new name for it: the anthropause. (Carl Zimmer, 2/26)

The New York Times: Get Whatever Covid-19 Vaccine You Can
More vaccines are coming soon. The one-dose coronavirus vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson will be reviewed on Friday by an advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration, with authorization by the agency possible as early as Saturday. Assuming F.D.A. approves emergency use of the vaccine, which has been shown to strongly protect recipients against severe disease and death from the virus, there may soon be three different shots on the market in the United States. Another available vaccine for Covid-19 will be a welcome boost to the effort of getting people vaccinated faster. While any approved vaccine has been deemed safe and effective, there’s a chance some vaccines may be more effective than others. You may wonder if you should hold out for what you perceive to be the very best vaccine, but the evidence suggests that we all should get the first vaccine available to us. (Bruce Y. Lee, 2/26)

The Wall Street Journal: Biden And Allies Stoked Vaccine Fears
President Biden has proposed an “unprecedented” information campaign to persuade people to get Covid-19 vaccinations. Why, when a pandemic has killed 500,000 Americans, does the public need to be convinced? In part because Mr. Biden and his allies spent 2020 stoking fear for political reasons. (Joel Zinberg, 2/25)