Vaccine phone lottery is a joke

Journalists are sometimes like critics. We find a little bad in the best of things.

Today, as the coronavirus vaccine gets distributed to the public for the first time, we should be cheering in the streets, right? Well, don’t celebrate just yet.

As President Ronald Reagan once warned us, be wary of anyone saying, “I am from the government, and I am here to help you.”

Journalists don’t write about the roughly 100,000 flights that take off and land safely around the globe every day. We write about the ones that crash, where people die. This week, we all died a little.

On Wednesday, residents of Broward were supposed to be able to call in to the local health department or go online and sign up for the coronavirus vaccine. It sounded so good.

Unfortunately, it was like a friend calling you up at the last minute to go out to dinner. A little notice might have been nice. But no one told us anything — and this was for a lifesaving vaccine, not a Pizza at Doughboys.

Tuesday night, local television broadcasters cheerfully told us that all you needed to do to get vaccinated, if you are over 65, is to make a phone call to the health department. Good luck with that.

On the day the lines opened, you had a better chance of picking the five winning numbers on Powerball. The lines were busy, the website went down, and crash went Humpty Dumpty. Today, seniors are rightfully angry by the administrative ineptitude of those in power. They should be.

Our government this week gave us a snapshot of how it has ever so magnificently mismanaged the initial distribution of the coronavirus vaccine to South Floridians over 65.

The scene has been reminiscent of a Rod Serling episode of the Twilight Zone from the 1950s. Five thousand people are trying to squeeze into a fall-out shelter built for 500.

We even watched television footage of senior citizens lining up overnight to be first in line to get the vaccine. Dear God, this is a life-saving medicine, not a football game.

Folks, you now know how gay people have felt for years fighting the pandemic of AIDS. We are still holding car washes, beach walks and smart rides to secure funding for a disease that has taken 40 million lives in 40 years.

The one duty our government has is to keep you safe. Despite having months to organize and strategize, our government has failed us miserably. South Floridians are discovering ‘Operation Warp Speed’ might have been better named ‘Operation Lost Turtle’.

Outside of being over 65, there were no parameters or governmental guidelines issued for seniors to be vaccinated. None.

There was no priority or preference given to a person’s advanced age, the gravity of their underlying conditions, or the immediacy of their need. Embarrassing.

Seniors frantically looking for hope got a busy signal, instead. This was Lotto for your life. Get through and you win. Lose, and you may die.

By 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Broward Health, a safety net hospital system, announced that all seats on the Spaceship Moderna are booked through February. How immeasurably unfair to the poorest in our community, and to those not having computers, online access, or cellphones.

The flawed vaccine roll-out to the elderly this week is both inexcusable and shameful. However, it is just one story in a state that has turned this pandemic into a horror film.

From data analysts being silenced to viral statistical truths being purposely concealed, and the state’s unemployment website being ancient, Floridians have witnessed a viral strain of management from Tallahassee. Journalists simply report on it.

If somebody wants to dress as the Grim Reaper and walk on the beach to warn you of the virus, we cover it for you. Next week, when someone is auctioning off their vaccine spot on ebay.com, we will write about that as well.

Journalists? We did not start the fire. We simply show you where the flames are. That is not fake news. That is exposing the fakes.

The sunlight of a free press is a better cure for the coronavirus than anyone telling you to gargle with Lysol.

Happy New Year. Be safe. Be cautious. Be conscious. Just because a page turns on the calendar, does not mean you can turn away from this virus.