87. Corruption

When I read the story of the wealthy Canadian couple who flew their private plane to a remote Indian reserve and posed as motel workers to get Covid vaccinated, I felt sick. And this morning, reading about people cutting in line—medical workers with no patient contact: administrators and psychiatrists and radiologists who work remotely; political wives and ex-wives who have been able to jump the lines—I felt pain in the gut.

 

We’ve had four years of turmoil over issues of race, religion, and fabricated realities, but somehow, effective vaccines were speedily developed by conscientious scientists, medical experts, business executives and government workers—and now we bow to favoritism and greed!

 

I’m told that one of the hallmarks of Roosevelt’s New Deal was the absence of corruption. Yes, one can probably find instances of people making the dishonest buck or nudging their communities or institutions ahead in the Works Progress Administration line, but one never hears talk of it when the stories of CCC crews and the money sent home are told; no one talks about payoffs when Post Office Murals and state by state information books written by out of work authors like John Steinbeck are celebrated; and although there were fights between public and private power companies, I’ve never heard that the Rural Electrification Agency was politicized. 

 

For my money, President Biden should step up on a national platform and decry all cheaters and line-jumpers. He should make sure that vaccines get to poor, black and brown neighborhoods, to garbage collectors and mail carriers before it gets to hospital CEOs. He should tell private companies involved in vaccinations to do their jobs and get paid for doing them—but to forgo adding the 20% or 40% profit figure atop expenses. 

 

The way out of the mess we are in is to do it together—fairly. I’ve heard seniors say that being healthy and in a secure living situation, they’ll wait for the garbage collectors and grocery clerks to go first. How can we get the country to do that?

 

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