The government had approximately 50 years of warning that hundreds of thousands of people would be gathering at the Oshkosh airport last week (608,000 through the gates (but the same person could be counted twice if showing up on multiple days, I think); 10,000 aircraft landing KOSH). The same government says that it will pay any price (with printed money?), bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to get life-saving vaccines into the arms of those too stupid to realize that they need salvation. From July 28, 2021, state-level: “‘Get vaccinated’ is the united message Wisconsin health officials say amidst COVID-19 spike”. From July 29, federal: “Biden announces measures to incentivize Covid-19 vaccinations, including a requirement for federal employees”.
You don’t have to be a marketing genius to see the opportunity to reach the general public at EAA AirVenture. Ford runs a big pavilion promoting its SUVs and pickups. Cookware, mattress, knife, and massage chair companies rent small booths. You can check out a new concrete truck or military vehicle from the local defense contractor. You can order an AC Cobra replica. The majority of the attendees aren’t pilots and many attendees aren’t even interested in aviation specifically, but merely show up as companions with someone who is. Some Mennonite farm kids, below, for example, just waiting for a technocrat to inject them for their own good:
Why wouldn’t the multi-billion dollar government vaccine bureaucracy not set up a booth at Oshkosh and offer people one-shot J&J or their first or second shot of the other vaccines? EAA probably would have given the government worthies space for free, given that the COVID-19 mandarins have the power to shut down gatherings such as EAA AirVenture. It can’t be a shortage of personnel. At any one time there were probably hundreds of government workers on site for various reasons (police, U.S. military recruiters in their recruiting booths, U.S. military crews that had come with aircraft, FAA administrators and educators, Border Patrol folks showing off their gear, etc.). [Exactly 0 of these folks were observed to be following President Biden’s example by wearing masks!]
Here’s a sampling of non-aviation enterprises that decided a gathering of hundreds of thousands was worth showing up for:
The excuse is that vaccine injections are too complex to deliver without a permanent building? The government actually has several permanent buildings at its disposal during “Oshkosh”. One is an FAA Safety building and one is half of a huge hangar in which various agencies explain their operations (“International Federal Pavilion”). Even without a permanent building, Chick-fil-A was delivering 20+ sandwiches per minute out of a trailer and tent:
Related:
Incompetence is the first name of Ms. Government.
That’s what you get when you have people who always get collectively rewarded with more money when they fail. Quiet sabotage is what every non-retarded government worker is doing.
You can get vaccinated at Walgreens. Lack of convenient access to the vaccine is not stopping anyone at this point. Based on people’s reports of covid-like symptoms for a day after the shot, getting it on vacation is a terrible idea, and maybe the government in this case was smart enough to realize that.
RS: Most people at AirVenture are not on vacation, I don’t think. They live within a 1-2-hour drive and come for the day to entertain their children with the afternoon airshow.
I guess then it’s really a question of if we think there are a significant number of people who drive past Walgreens etc. everyday and don’t think the covid shot is important enough to stop off and get it, but would stop and get it if they walked past a table at a large event where it was being offered. My initial thought on this question was that there would not be many people (that basically at this point it is convenient enough that anyone who wants it has it, and anyone who hasn’t has a reason and probably won’t get it). But after thinking about this more, my opinion has flipped (we can call that “pulling a CDC”). I expect there probably is a large portion of the population that is just apathetic. They see the sign at the Walgreens that says vaccines are available, but they don’t know if they need an appointment, will they have to show an insurance card, will they have to wait in line… and they don’t care enough about getting vaccinated to put any effort into finding the answer to these questions. But they’re not fundamentally opposed to getting a vaccine. They might have an attitude of “sure I’ll probably get vaccinated eventually, just kinda busy right now.” And so if they were at this giant event and there was a big table, and an attractive volunteer came up and said “hey you can get your shot right now, totally free, will you come do it?” And then they had some additional peer pressure of seeing other people around the table in the recovery phase… that could be enough pressure to push an apathetic person over the edge and convince them to get vaccinated right then and there. And I bet there are a lot of these apathetic people. I personally know young people who have not been vaccinated because they have accurately assessed the risk that COVID poses to them (0) and so have made the rational decision to not put any effort into reducing that risk from 0 to still 0 by getting vaccinated. But they appreciate that they will likely need the vaccine in the future for international travel, and so plan to get it eventually (I.e. when the vaccine has positive utility). Such an individual could likely be swayed by a small nudge of peer pressure and an extremely convenient offer to do it right now. So yes, I agree with you now that an event with 600k attendees should have been offering vaccinations.
I guess instead Biden is planning to send people door-to-door to try and pressure people to get vaccines. That will clearly be less effective against the apathetic because it will not be paired with an immediate opportunity to get a vaccine, and the pressure will wear off shortly after the door is closed. But at least the administration can look like they tried.
The NATCA gang were all masked. It was actually a little jarring, because they were just about the only group I saw masked inside, and I don’t think I ever saw anybody masked outside. (I saw maybe two dozen masked inside apart from the NATCA people.) I agree, though, that a J&J clinic on-site might well have picked up quite a few of the unchipped, er, unvaccinated. (Though maybe wait until the last day, in case you get the meh response that lots of the newly injected get.) On the other hand, I saw plenty of people at MKE unmasked, and a woman on the plane wearing a knitted faux mask that she somehow got away with.
That justification is bogus. My vaccines were delivered in a hospital parking lot, from tents, in cars. (It looked more like the entry to a music festival than anything medical)
Does the FAA still say 48 hours clotshot to throttle? Giving out something that is supposed to ground you for two days at the world’s largest airshow seems off.
GB: As noted in the original post, most of the people who come to Oshkosh are not pilots. Those who are pilots will generally be staying for more than two days. There are also tons of kids, many of whom aren’t old enough to hold pilot certificates (16 for Student and 17 for Private). It would have been a great place to remind 12-year-olds of their obligation to get an “investigational non-FDA-approved” vaccine so that 82-year-olds can die from something other than COVID-19.
The two girls at the personal injury attorney booth are adorable. Are they attorneys?
I didn’t ask, since I hadn’t suffered any injury (unless you count wounded pride from wimping out and landing at KATW instead of following the epic NOTAM to land VFR at KOSH).