A Dallas County Judge by the name of Clay Jenkins may be a familiar name to you now if you’ve been following Dallas’ Covid response. He got a bit of flack for being late to a meeting he was virtually attending due to technical difficulties according to a Dallas Morning News article published on December 30th. In it they say:
“When Dallas County commissioners met downtown recently, John Wiley Price and J.J. Koch snickered out loud. It was 9 a.m., the start of their Tuesday semimonthly meeting, and County Judge Clay Jenkins was late. They bemoaned their colleague because they were there in person, donning masks, and Jenkins was not. The county’s top elected official was at home, where he has led meetings since the start of the pandemic in March. . . In fact, Jenkins said, technical issues — not tardiness — is typically why he is delayed joining his four colleagues, who have continued to meet in person at the historic county administration building facing Dealey Plaza. And while the moment was mostly in jest, it was symbolic of how Jenkins has had detractors, despite his best efforts to promote good public health practices to combat the coronavirus.”
That being said, Judge Jenkins refuses to let the nay-sayers get to him. He remains headstrong in his Covid response efforts, the most noteworthy of which, is his vaccine awareness campaign to boost trust in the new Covid-19 vaccine according to a KENS 5 news article from December 14th. In it they say:
“Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Monday that he and the county’s Health and Human Services department will be collaborating with local health professionals and community leaders on a vaccine awareness campaign that will be rolled out soon. Jenkins informed WFAA about the campaign as hospitals in Dallas receive and administer their first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. A day, that Jenkins underscored as historic. He hopes to get the vaccine to nursing home staff and residents by next week. ‘Once those doses are in our hands, I promise you that they won’t sit on the shelf for very long,’ Jenkins said. But Jenkins is also preparing to battle skeptics of the vaccine. An ABC News/Ipso poll released Monday found that 15% of Americans would refuse to take the vaccine outright while 40% would take it right away, and 44% percent said they would wait.”
With vaccines being rolled out in Dallas, and more doses on the way, now is the time to raise awareness about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, especially since contrary to what some may believe, vaccines do expire, and this one is no different. From the point of delivery to the arrival at a hospital or health center, healthcare workers are working on tight windows of opportunity to administer doses.
