My issue comes more with seeing 80+ year old patients in clinic with multiple comorbidities who are asking us daily about when they can get their vaccines so they can see their families again, but we're vaccinating M1s who are sitting home on zoom all day. I'm not blaming the students-- if you have the opportunity to get vaccinated, I agree you should jump on it. It's more a criticism of the flaws in vaccine rollout.
Agreed. I'm not criticizing people for jumping on getting a vaccine if it's offered, but the criteria being implemented (at least in my city) are mind-numbingly idiotic and harmful.
I'm an MD/PhD student. I'm in my PhD years, so I'm not being offered a vaccine. On a base level, I think this is fine. That's how it should be.
However, my school specifically issued vaccines with the following priority: COVID-facing staff > other clinical staff > administrators > medical students (specifically excluding MD/PhD students in the PhD years) > research staff.
So I am not being offered a vaccine despite interacting with ~50-100 people/day in a research setting where I have to be in every day, including them using my building lobby as a student testing center and my lab as a sample processing facility. Despite teaching undergrads in person all Fall to save this school's finances while they
actively refused to tell me if any of the little COVID vectors I spent 2 hours with 3x/week tested positive. Despite working the nightshift and
completely hamstringing my PhD to keep lab density low and campus numbers down, even though we haven't had a single intralab infection in the whole university. But M1s and M2s, who are non-clinical aside from some very uninvolved shadowing, are already vaccinated?
Then, they started vaccinating research staff from the hospital (but not from the university) (???). We have 4 people in our lab, healthy 23-26 year olds with no comorbidities, who are getting vaccines this week because two years ago they signed up to use equipment at the hospital and are technically on the payroll as volunteer research staff. So they are "hospital employees." These are regular PhD students with absolutely no clinical contact. One of them has been exclusively working from home because her project was computational.
I go out and get my groceries and see unvaccinated, obviously diabetes and heart disease-ridden cashiers in their 60s wearing sweat and drool-soaked masks still waiting. My immunocompromised mother was only able to get a vaccine as a school nurse because she agreed to take a frontline job giving vaccines. My 93 year old grandmother got COVID last week because her aide wasn't offered a vaccine early enough and she gave her COVID. My 70+ year old aunt and uncle can't get a vaccine despite being state-eligible.
My aunt's brother died of COVID in his 50s. A family friend I've known since I was young died of COVID. 3000 more people every day and we have literal magic vials that save lives sitting in freezers. Meanwhile people in my lab are either celebrating their new-found freedom or scheming up ways to become adhoc hospital employees. It makes me want to throw a chair through the wall.