The World Health Organization (WHO) has been forced to ask people at lower risk of contracting COVID-19 to wait their turn to be vaccinated. The WHO's request came after cases of political leaders in several countries being vaccinated by skipping the protocol became known. Spain among them. It is terrible to have to tell a public servant with a lower risk of contracting the coronavirus to please wait their turn to be vaccinated. It is intolerable to have to remind them that healthcare and assistance personnel have been and are on the front lines of the pandemic, overexposed, and that they need the vaccines now.
Mayors, councilors, regional ministers, bishops, prosecutors, generals, cronies... None of these groups are part of the priority groups to receive the COVID-19 vaccine established by the Ministry of Health. The reason is that none of them are residents and healthcare and social-healthcare personnel working in residences for the elderly and care for people with severe dependencies. Nor are they very elderly people, nor priority personnel in the healthcare and social-healthcare field, nor other healthcare or social-healthcare personnel, nor people considered to be highly dependent. So none of them can be vaccinated ahead of time.
The European Union has signed several vaccine procurement contracts and continues to sign new ones, which guarantees the distribution of doses among member countries in proportion to their populations with the aim of reaching, first, immunity and, then, 100% of European citizens. Personally, I have no doubt that we will reach these goals during this year; however, there are those who do not respect the turn and sneak in secretly even knowing that there will be vaccines for everyone.
There is a protocol and a list with the order of people to be vaccinated, so, in a situation like this, every public servant must conduct themselves with total exemplary behavior. Putting personal interest before the collective, the self before us, is equivalent to betraying the trust of the governed in an episode of extreme gravity. And if mayors, councilors, regional ministers, bishops, prosecutors, generals, cronies or the like skip the established order to receive the vaccine when it is not their turn, passing in front of the risk groups and the workers who are struggling in the vanguard, they are simply exercising a privilege that no one has granted them and are enlisting in the dark and diverse underworld of corruption.
There is no justification for cutting in line, but, when it happens, we are not facing a tolerable variant of roguery, so the recipe that should be applied to those who cut in line is simple. If a public official has to be told to get in line, or directly cuts in line, there should not even be a request for dismissal, but the normal thing should be immediate resignation at their own request. The consequence is that they must resign from their positions immediately, because this type of people are superfluous in public life.
Fco. Manuel Fajardo Palarea, PSOE senator for Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
