Scott has chronicled the COVID fiasco here in Minnesota in his “Coronavirus In One State” series. Now that the focus has shifted to getting at-risk people vaccinated, our state government is finding new ways to drop the ball, or worse.
I got an email today from a guy who said that he had started to fill out the Minnesota Department of Health’s online vaccine sign-up form, but discontinued the effort when he had to answer seemingly-irrelevant questions about his race and sexual orientation. I was surprised and checked it out. This is what I found:
These are, indeed, required fields, as I found when I tried to proceed with the registration without filling them out:
Why does the State of Minnesota need to know your race, “gender” and sexual preference before scheduling you for a covid shot? There are only two possibilities: either the state intends to use this information to discriminate in distributing the vaccine, or else it is collecting irrelevant information for some collateral and likely nefarious purpose.
That question was answered earlier today when the Tim Walz administration “announced plans to expand vaccination efforts to low-income groups and minority communities,” i.e., its intention to discriminate. And while it apparently wasn’t covered in today’s announcement, it is reasonable to conclude that the Walz administration intends to discriminate in favor of gay and transgender residents as well. Otherwise, why ask the question?
It isn’t easy to lower my opinion of the Walz administration, but its invidious discrimination in the distribution of the covid vaccine did just that.
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