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Comment by kuu | Hacker News Reader

In Spain we had many cases of politicians and public people using this excuse to get vaccinated before the rest (even bishops used it, and not only one!).

I think it would be an easy to fix thing: Have a list of extra people available if you end up with an extra dose.

It shouldn't be that hard, we had a year for preparing for this...

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Politicians assume their position by winning a popularity contest, not a foresight-and-competency contest.

Its called leading from the rear, and that is basically what I thought when Greg Abbott (Texas gov) got his, since AFAIK he isn't in any of the identified groups.

https://abc13.com/health/gov-greg-abbott-receives-covid-19-v...

At least when Biden (referenced in the article) got his, he exceeded the age requirements in most states.

The claim that they are doing it to show people its safe is a bit cynical IMHO.

that works if you show it publicly(and then there is the debate that its bad because you jumped the queue, or its bad because not getting a vaccine shows they aren't trustworthy)

But in spain the cases that have surfaced are of mainly politicians who got the shot and tried to keep quiet about it, which think we can all agree its bad.

So, thats a loophole, just get it done with the camera's rolling?

In the US much of the vaccine resistance is a result of the news/propaganda channels a particular party (which Greg Abbot belongs to) uses to generate fear and doubt in order to win elections. So they generate the problem, then they get to help show its safe? I mean they aren't going to convince any of the hardcore conspiracy theory people they weren't just injected with saline.

Plus, many of the politicians assume they are more valuable than the political system which is designed to replace them every couple years says they are. Particularly in TX where the governorship is unusually weak.

you don't need to convince hardcore opponents, mostly you need to convince undecided people. just like in an election.

The last few elections in the US haven't been won by convincing people. They have been won by getting people who are already convinced to actually vote. That is why the undecided voters portions of most poles were basically 0%.

The point is that logistics are hard. Even if you have an "extras" list, there will be odd circumstances where you're forced to pivot.

> we had a year for preparing for this...

I hear this argument a lot. Health officials have been overworked just trying to stay on top of the pandemic.

They aren't experts in logistics. The only way to have been more prepared is already have a plan pre-pandemic. Once you're in the middle, it's chaos.

We don’t need health officials to figure out how to ship things that are really cold really quickly. This could have been managed much better by the federal government overall. It shouldn’t fall to health departments to do this.

It’s such an easy thing to lie about. “I had only one dose left and had to use it on my wife.” How do we know there was not 10 more people but he did what he could to get exactly 9. There is huge incentive too. It would be less suspicious if his wife wasn’t sick.

I suspect the nytimes is interested in pushing the racism angle more than anything.

The response to COVID-19 is very different between Spain and the US. Harris County got the vaccine faster than anticipated and no protocols from late December even existed.

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