Seattle radio host Jason Rantz said Tuesday that Massachusetts has opted for “the rapist who is in jail” to get the coronavirus vaccine before elderly people in the state.
“We have Christmas coming up,” Rantz noted during an appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “You’ve got a grandmother right now who is unable to spend time with her 9-year-old grandson, not see the smile on his face as he is opening Christmas gifts, over concern due to COVID [19].”
“But the rapist who is in jail will get vaccinated first,” Rantz continued. “That is not a social justice movement that anyone should want to be a part of, and it’s certainly not equitable.” (RELATED: Orange County, California, Sheriff Won’t Release Prisoners Back Into Community Despite Judge’s COVID-19 Order)
Massachusetts recently announced that prisoners would be among the first in its population to receive the vaccine due to their close proximity to each other.
Rantz said prioritizing prisoners for the coronavirus vaccine is “about a new social justice cause. Every single day this movement has a new cause and this is the newest one.” He suggested progressives tend to assess people as filling “two different roles.”
“One, you have privilege. You and I, most of the people who watching — and other people who are victims. Now, if you are in jail, you are the actual victim.”
The journalist suggested that judgement is based on the observation that jails are “disproportionately” occupied by “people of color” because of “a justice system, of police officers and judges and juries that are racist: they’re just throwing people in jail because of the color of their skin.”
For those believing prisoners are “victims in jail who cannot socially distance” it is a natural step to believe that inmates “should be the ones to get vaccinated before anybody else.”
Rantz noted that “the mostly white, elderly people in Massachusetts who have the ability to actually separate from other” are not perceived as victims.
California inmates were caught on video deliberately infecting themselves with the coronavirus because it might bring them release. (RELATED: Rantz: Media Is Putting On ‘A Master Class’ Of Gaslighting Over Seattle Riots)
Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller gets his first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, administered by HN Samantha Alvarez, at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Dec. 14, 2020 in Bethesda, Maryland. The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off in an effort to get protection against the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta-Pool/Getty Images)
Dr. Simon Wildes, an infectious disease expert who sits on the Massachusetts coronavirus vaccine advisory group told the New York Times that the state considered “equity as a core principle in our recommendations. We have had a lot of cases of COVID in the prisons, and we wanted to make sure those at highest risk were getting the vaccine first.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson called that decision “so sick, so dark, so wrong, so contrary to American ideals and traditions.”
Despite early reluctance to embrace the vaccine, President-elect Joe Biden received it Monday.