Years ago, there used to be an old joke people would play right before an election day. In a group - your office, your class - somebody would post a notice like this: "To relieve congestion and crowding due to the expected high turnout in tomorrow's election, the government has announced special procedures. All Republicans will vote on Tuesday, while Democrats will vote on Wednesday." (That's the Republican version, of course.)
No one in the room was ever fooled by it, and most got a bit of a good-natured bipartisan chuckle from it. But that was in easier-going times. Today, some might take it as a serious attempt at voter suppression, or some others might shoot the guy who put those notices on the table.
This trip down memory lane, though, made me think of when I was watching Republican lawmakers at the night session after the attack on the Capitol refuse the offer of simple masks to wear. A light bulb went on: Could that old joke be one way to sort out some of the problems of dispensing the covid vaccines? Of course we can't ask people how they voted, but it may be assumed that, given the opportunity, they will cluster where they think they'll find compatible souls. That's what everyone does these days, and that's part of our current problems.
So, some vaccination stations could be set up to appeal to a Republican demographic, and others decorated to attract Democratic voters. Maybe it could be done with pheromones, like those traps people put out for Japanese beetles or aphids - the smells of gunpowder and latte, maybe. Or just by posting signs that would say, respectively, "Masks Absolutely Required," and "No Masks Needed."
At the "Democratic" station, people would be offered two choices: Pfizer or Moderna.
Republicans, at their station, would be offered two choices also: bleach, or hydroxychloroquine.
(Oh, and of course both groups would be offered an appointment for their second doses.)
This system could certainly help sort out the men from the boys, the skinks from the monitors! And, in an eminently fair and just way, problems of shortages of some of the available drugs.
I've heard rumors that this idea was being given serious consideration in the government, and that's why politicians of a certain sort flocked to get their vaccine ahead of even the most vulnerable cases - the vaccine for a disease they had labeled a hoax, and against which they had refused to protect themselves or others,
