Letters to the Editor: Confusion, concerns about vaccine plan in Kentucky
Follow the guidelines
Kentucky is currently in phase 1a for coronavirus vaccines. This group is for assisted living, longterm care and healthcare providers. I turn on the news and there are legislators, ex-governors, and their wives being vaccinated. This is the same group making masks optional at the Capitol. Unless these politicians are physicians they need to get in line like everyone else.
Philip French, Lexington
Older people devalued
In trying to determine when older people might receive a vaccine, I contacted Walgreens. The pharmacist there said they had no clear plan. I called the health department, starting with Dr. Craig Humbaugh or his assistant. I left two or three messages with no response. Finally I reached a woman but she had no idea when those over 70 might receive vaccines. She said the “head of the vaccination team” would contact me. Never happened. No one seems able to tell you anything. The state has only a general list of who comes first, second, or third.
Most important, the order of vaccinations seems to devalue the lives of our older generation. The first person vaccinated in England was over 70. The first group in the European Union are those over 70. Our plan does not seem fair or in any way moral. One has to wonder how many of that age group will die because of COVID-19 before they ever get a vaccine, likely several months from now. That is, if they can find out how, where, or when to be vaccinated. This is wrong and more people in that age group should speak out more loudly about it.
Richard A. Getty, Lexington
UK failing workers
I never thought I’d find myself speaking out against the University of Kentucky’s healthcare system, but the truth of how they have treated employees during this pandemic has been dreadful. After over nine months of being on the frontline caring for COVID patients physically and providing emotional support, I succumbed to the virus. I was scared and isolated from my family. With all my physical ailments I never thought that I’d be in the position where UK would refuse to pay me, with the premise I could have been infected elsewhere. God bless all that are at home trying to survive on what assistance is given. It just seems unjust that I am on the frontline in healthcare and contract the virus, and receive no pay for the time I needed off per the health department to heal. Everyone in the healthcare field is fatigued, so the last thing we should need to worry about is that the university would treat us so inappropriately. This seems criminal. To all fellow workers, and all others as frustrated as I am with the university’s blatant failure to do the right thing, I feel blessed and honored to be working among all of you.
Violet Stoops, Winchester
Chao cowardly
The cowardly act of “resignation in protest” by Elaine Chao, U.S. transportation secretary and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife, is a farce. If she really objects to the actions of the president whom she has served loyally and profitably for four years, she should stay in a position to support efforts to remove him from office.
But no, the Taiwanese-born Chao has chosen to betray the country which educated and adopted her. For four years, she overlooked and ignored all of Trump’s unethical, immoral, and illegal actions. She simultaneously used her cabinet post to enrich herself, her husband, and her foreign family.
Now, when it is politically beneficial to herself and her husband, she is beating a hasty retreat, slinking away, her pockets lined with 30 pieces of silver.
It is too late for the rats to save themselves by jumping ship. Any among the president’s supporters who love this country and the Constitution they swore to uphold must stay and fight for its protection from the madman.
That is their only road to salvation.
Ron McBride, Nicholasville