Art Caplan: Vaccine Frustration in Medical Community Is 'Predictive' of Confusion to Come in 2021

On Wednesday, medical ethicist Art Caplan returned to Boston Public Radio, where he weighed in on the latest news around the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them, he discussed frustrations with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in hospitals throughout the U.S., and unanswered questions around who deserves vaccine priority.

“There are these issues of priority and who’s really at risk that’ve started to rear their heads,” he said, warning that more confusion is likely to come once the general public can apply for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

“It’s predictive of what I think we’re gonna see in maybe January, February, March, as other people start to say ‘hey, what about me?’"

During the conversation, Caplan also discussed the departure of White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, and explained why he’s not worried that a mutated version of the coronavirus, discovered last week in the U.K., will be resistant to the current vaccines. 

Art Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU School of Medicine.