Ignoring medical advice, Dunleavy administration refused to make frontline workers top vaccination priority

The reporting on the Dunleavy administration’s decision to make those 65 and older next in line for COVID-19 vaccinations has failed to examine the major changes made by the Dunleavy administration to recommendations made by health professionals.

In particular, check the notes from medical community meetings on Dec. 22 and Dec. 29—the advice was to make those 70 and older and frontline essential workers the top priority, a modified application of recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control.

The most serious unexamined question for Alaska’s news organizations is why the Dunleavy administration decided that frontline essential workers should be given a lower priority for vaccine access than the medical professionals recommended in a 20-0 vote.

This is all about the political power of those aged 65 and older. The Dunleavy administration is copying Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis also rejected the CDC guidelines.

On Dec. 29, the Alaska Vaccine Allocation Advisory Committee voted 20-0 to make those 70 and older the top priority. Next in line would be frontline workers aged 50 and older. People aged 60-69 would have been in the third group. The committee includes 24 medical experts from across Alaska.

Instead of following the committee’s proposal, the Dunleavy administration made all those 65 and older the top priority, creating a much larger group and pushing frontline workers like grocery store workers, postal workers and teachers—who face a substantial risk of exposure—farther back in line.

Many people 65 and older are likely to be conservative voters who participate in every election, so this is clearly a politically popular position for the administration to take.

The Dunleavy plan gives priority to a group that includes about 91,000 people 65 and older. At 67, I am in that group and I’d like to be vaccinated as soon as possible. I also want the state to proceed in a rational manner.

There had been discussion among the medical experts that the first “phase B” group should be much smaller to maintain a focus and make it easier to progress to the next phase in vaccinating people. The mortality numbers for those 75 and older are four times higher than for younger people, which is why older people were deemed the most important to be treated first.

The state’s news organizations have not looked into the revisions made by the administration or analyzed why the state opted to cater to those aged 65-74 and pay less attention to frontline workers.

“The Alaska-specific recommendations were first debated by a committee of medical experts, then tweaked by Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy’s administration — a process that was not easy, (Dr. Anne) Zink said,” Alaska Public Media reported.

“Tweaked” does not accurately convey the extent of these changes.

“A state allocation committee last week made people 65 and older the next phase of recipients,” the Anchorage Daily News reported, a statement that does not reflect what actually happened.

An Anchorage Daily News editorial praised the medical committee for making the right decisions without mentioning that the Dunleavy approach was not the plan offered by the Alaska experts.

The state website acknowledges that the final vaccine allocation committee “recommendations are not the final allocation determinations.”

The final determinations were revised to focus on those 65 and older, while pushing frontline essential workers back farther in line.

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