Recently, 25 members of the House penned a letter in December calling on the Centers for Disease Control to add K-12 educators and school personnel to the list of critical groups prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccine. The letter acknowledged that states ultimately make the call on the order in which its citizens get the vaccine, but the group argued that teachers and schools are “cornerstones” of their communities and deserve vaccine priority.

And for its decision, North Carolina gets a failing grade from us.

In fact, we just learned this week that law enforcement officers and firefighters — under our state’s plan — were not among those front-line individuals who received the COVID-19 vaccine first.

Shameful.

The letter writers, of course, are correct that teachers should be a priority. But we would link our law enforcement officers and firefighters should have been at the front of the line as well.

As we all learned this week, North Carolina has been ranked as one of the country’s slowest to roll out the COVID-19 vaccines. In fact, only about 25% of the 820,000 available vaccines had been utilized around the state as of earlier this week.

What that means, to us at least, is that both Gov. Roy Cooper and Secretary of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services Mandy Cohen have miserably failed the people of North Carolina.

It’s also irritated state lawmakers, who returned to work this week and learned that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday ranked North Carolina as the 10th slowest state in the country per capita in administering doses.

That’s totally unacceptable.

Cooper and Cohen have excuses for the slow rollout — including that health departments are hoarding the vaccines — but if they are going to continually harp on and expect residents statewide to do their part by wearing masks, socially distance and wash hands regularly, then the governor and health leader should do theirs by mandating the vaccine rollout. With stiff penalties, if it is not.

Here in Scotland County, vaccinations appear to be moving along well for most and we applaud Scotland Health Care System for its efforts. Next week, those vaccinations will be opened up even more to the community.

But we remain proponents of moving our teachers, firefighters and law enforcement to the front of the line now.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”