A celebrity and a vaccine

Poland’s liberals forget one thing in their defence of celebrities against the forces of evil and ungrateful leftists re: their jumping the coronavirus vaccine queue — it’s not about those 18 vaccines. It’s the fact 18 people used their privilege to take vaccines reserved for others (i.e. medical staff).

There’s indeed a report of medical staff not getting the vaccine because of this, and the word goes the people of art & media to get vaccinated early go beyond the initial 18 — there could be another dozens of them.

Some celebrities apologised, excusing themselves that it was a plan for a pro-vaccine promo campaign gone wrong. A poor excuse in the light of being known the fact we’re in the vaccination’s phase zero (i.e. for medics and social workers) and the campaign story wasn’t a thing until right after the scandal began — a rather unconvincing coincidence.

They — usually ostensibly liberal — shot us in the foot. As some are active in Poland’s ongoing political discourse, I think it’s fair to assume they were fully aware the government and their acolytes could have a field day with this, a ready-made ammunition against their “out-of-touch” liberal opponents, who would in fact rather defend classist cultural and political elites than stand for liberalism and equality.

More surprising than elites abusing their power is the liberal mainstream’s defence of that, along the classic line: “those bastards are our bastards.” It’s an equivalent pattern of thinking to that displayed by the right-wing ruling party and their friends, whom’s nepotism and corruption the liberals are (rightfully) quick to point out.

Members of the PiS ruling party were of course fast to point fingers at the celebrities, but it’s all the same pretence. They’re themselves corrupted in scandals of much bigger sort, and how little they care for public health can be seen in the consistency of their measures against the pandemic — or the fact there isn’t any.

It’s another gift for them as well — the vaccine scandal is an easy substitute story for government’s lack of competence regarding the coronavirus response. Everyone seems to have already forgotten the New Year’s Eve curfew that wasn’t and it’s barely January 5th.

Just like the butchered education reforms that overcrowded our schools, which during the pandemic were left to fend for themselves, pressured still to deliver the curriculum while alternating between coronavirus-related closures and openings and struggling with students' and teachers' digitial exclusion – still a major problem in relatively poor Poland.

Even the 70 million złotych Poland’s minister of state assets Jacek Sasin disappeared through the May presidential elections take a back bench, despite Sasin causing another voting to go awry last month — the Youth’s Word of the Year award.