Beatles – "Please Please Me" (1964)

I don't want to sound complaining

But you know there's always rain in my heart

My grandmother used to say, “If you want to have dessert, you have to eat your vegetables first!”  

If you’ve read the two previous 2 or 3 lines posts – long and tedious rants about how politics has perverted covid vaccination priorities – you’ve eaten more than your share of vegetables.

So here’s dessert: a post that has some very nice things to say about today’s featured Beatlemania-era Lennon-McCartney song.  

“He likes it!  Mikey likes it!”

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“Please Please Me” – which was written by John Lennon when he was living in Liverpool with his Aunt Mimi – was the Beatles’ second UK single.  It was released in January 1963, and went all the way to #1 on the New Musical Express and Melody Maker charts.  (It peaked at #2 on the Record Retailer chart.)

The record was released in the U.S. the next month but failed to chart.  It was re-released just after New Year’s Day 1964, and quickly climbed to the #3 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

“Please Please Me” wasn’t an overnight success.  Lennon intended it to sound like a Roy Orbison song, slow and bluesy.  But the first time they recorded, producer George Martin thought it was “a very dreary song” that “badly needed pepping up.”  

McCartney agreed that Martin deserved much of the credit for what “Please Please Me” eventually became:

We sang it and George Martin said, “Can we change the tempo?”  We said, “What’s that?”  He said, “Make it a bit faster. Let me try it.”  And he did.  We thought, “Oh, that’s all right, yes.”  Actually, we were a bit embarrassed that he had found a better tempo than we had.

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In many ways, “Please Please Me” is a typical early Beatles song.  For one thing, it’s more a “songlet” than a song – it consists of two very short verses, a bridge, and a chorus that consists mostly of the phrase “Come on” repeated over and over.  The Beatles had to repeat the first verse to stretch the song to two minutes long (barely).

And the lyrics are “clumsy and trite,” to quote Matt Blick, the creator of the Beatles Songwriting Academy website – and no one’s a bigger Beatles fan than he is.  Like most Lennon-McCartney songs of the era, it doesn’t tell a real story – the boy and girl who are the only two characters in the song are as generic as they can be.  

I can’t resist calling out the lines from the bridge quoted at the beginning of this post:

I don't want to sound complaining

But you know there's always rain in my heart 

 

I like that Lennon doesn’t use an end rhyme in the second line – he rhymes “complaining” with “rain in,” but then adds “my heart.”

But those lines sound like there were written by someone for who English was a second language – a very distant second.  (Can you imagine saying “I don’t want to sound complaining” in an actual conversation?  And “there’s always rain in my heart” won’t make anyone forget Shakespeare.)

In contrast to what Marc Antony said about Julius Caesar, I come not to bury “Please Please Me,” but to praise it.

*     *     *     *     *

As Matt Blick has pointed out in his Beatles Songwriting Academy post about the song, there’s no wasted motion in this song – the arrangement is very economical.

The main theme – the melody that the first two lines of each verse is sung to – is used in the guitar/harmonica introduction.  But only the first part of that theme is played.  

That’s enough so that you recognize the melody when John starts singing, but it’s not too much – having the entire theme played twice by the guitar and harmonica, and then repeated twice more in the verse would be too much.

The guitar and harmonica play the first half of the theme at the end of the chorus, before the second verse starts up – but instead of playing it twice (as they did in the intro), they only play it once.  That’s enough for the listener to recognize it – particular when it’s played by the harmonica, which has a very  distinctive sound quality – but not enough to be tiresome.

The guitar and harmonica play that truncated theme once more between the second chorus and the bridge, but shorten it by a couple of notes.  Now that you’ve heard it a few times, even just the first few notes become recognizable – it gets the job done, but very economically.

Finally, the guitar and harmonica play the same half-theme used in the intro after the final chorus – when John and Paul are singing “Oh yeah, like I please you” three times.  The notes are the same, but the effect is different because you’re not hearing them all by themselves, but simultaneously with the sung lines.

To sum up, the basic theme is repeated at least a dozen times – plenty for it to worm its way into your brain.  But each time the guitar and harmonica play it, it’s different – once they repeat it twice, the next time they play it once, and the next time they shorten it by a couple of notes.  It tastes great, but it’s less filling at the same time.

*     *     *     *     *

Blick also points out that the lyrics in each line of the verses fill up three measures, but leave the fourth free for two very sharp little riffs by George Harrison.  Those riffs (which are quite different) are suddenly there, and just as quickly are gone – they make an impression, but they don’t linger too long.  

The song ends not by fading out, but with an interesting and somewhat unexpected five-chord progression that brings things to a very definitive close.  I have to think that the Beatles mastered this kind of ending during their many years of performing live – I can imagine that the crowd held its  collective breath as the Beatles surprised them with that final chord progression, and then burst into cheers and applause.

*     *     *     *     *

Unlike many other early Lennon-McCartney songs, “Please Please Me” uses repetition sparingly – just a pinch here and there – and to good effect.  There’s no excess filler in this song – nothing that was added just to stretch the song to an acceptable length.

I wish all the early Lennon-McCartney songs were as tightly constructed as “Please Please Me.”

 

Click here to listen to the stereo recording of “Please Please Me” that was included on the album of the same name.  I’ve chosen it because it contains an obvious vocal error by Lennon in the final verse – listen to what should be “I know you never even try, girl” at 1:27 of the song.  (I guess Martin and the lads thought the resulting take was good enough for government work.)

Click below to buy the single (mono) version of the record from Amazon:

Beatles – "I'll Get You" (1963)

But I’ll get you, I’ll get you in the end

Yes I will, I’ll get you in the end

Oh yeah, oh yeah

If you still don’t believe me when I say that Lennon and McCartney didn’t put a lot of effort into the lyrics of their early songs, take a look at the chorus to “I’ll Get You,” which is quoted above.

Case closed.

*     *     *     *     *

Like most states, my home state of Maryland invited health care workers, residents and staff of nursing homes, and first responders like police officers and firefighters to step to the front of the line when it came to covid vaccinations.

I have absolutely no problem with those groups being included in priority group 1A, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

The next priority group (which Maryland labelled group 1B) includes adults over the age of 75 – certainly justified given that older folks have a MUCH higher chance of dying if they contract covid – and those in assisted living facilities (which are about as dangerous as nursing homes).  Like the people in group 1A, I’m absolutely fine with waiting until those highly vulnerable 1B groups have a chance to be vaccinated.

But then things got political.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued guidance stating that schools can reopen safely before all teachers are inoculated – even if the local covid-19 infection rate is relatively high. 

“There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated,” said the doctor who was chosen by President Biden to be CDC director.  “Vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely reopening schools.”

But according to the New York Times, the CDC’s guidance “has not changed the minds of powerful teachers’ unions opposed to returning students to classrooms” before not only classroom teachers but also other school staff members are vaccinated. 

Teachers’ unions often have tremendous influence in state elections.  And parents are DESPERATE to get their kids out of the house and back in school.  So many state governments – including Maryland – are allowing teachers to jump the queue when it comes to vaccinations.  

*     *     *     *     *

By the way, there’s another problem with the decision by Maryland and other states to give those in the education sector higher vaccination priority: not everyone who qualifies for that priority is a classroom teacher.

For example, I have a family member who works for a Maryland community college.  However, she’s not a classroom teacher, and can do her work from home – without exposing herself to covid.  But she gets priority status when it comes to covid vaccinations because she works for an educational institution.

In fact, she has priority even over an old guy like me when it comes to getting a shot, even though she is at no greater risk of becoming infected than I am . . . and even though I face a MUCH greater risk of hospitalization or death if I do catch the disease.

*     *     *     *     *

Reason magazine has pointed out how shortsighted it is to move teachers ahead of seniors for political reasons:

Vaccine schemes that shirk the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and fail to recognize that old people are at the highest risk of dying from covid-19, by an order of magnitude, are irresponsible and will result in deaths that could have been prevented. . . .

It’s very hard to look at the currently available data and make the case that either (a) schools are a significant vector for covid-19 transmission from students to teachers or (b) those vaccine doses being allocated to the entire pool of teachers over elderly people will do the most good, if the aim is to reduce deaths.

(You would think everyone would agree that preventing deaths should be the #1 priority when it comes to a vaccination strategy.  But some people see things differently.)

Reason went on to note that there’s no guarantee that vaccinating teachers sooner rather than later will actually result in earlier school reopening:

Vaccinating teachers might not even be the silver bullet that allows kids to return to school in a timely manner . . . . In Fairfax, Virginia, for example, the teachers union president said she opposes schools returning to full-time in-person instruction even after teachers are vaccinated.  She argued the district should wait until children are fully vaccinated – something not likely to happen until 2022 – rendering the need for teachers to receive vaccines ahead of many senior citizens absolutely pointless.

A San Francisco Chronicle headline from earlier this month puts it bluntly: “Moving California teachers to the front of the vaccine line might not be enough to reopen schools.”

Giving teachers higher priority in order to get schools open is the wrong strategy, but it’s not a completely unreasonable policy.  But giving teachers higher priority when doing so doesn’t ensure that schools will reopen sooner rather than is indefensible.

*     *     *     *     *

Reason calls on the states to “pursue a more sane vaccination approach, one that ensures the elderly people most at risk of dying receive their vaccine doses as soon as humanly possible.”

And they’re not the only ones who are saying that.  Experts around the world generally agree that the best way to minimize covid deaths is to give priority to seniors – not teachers.

Here’s an excerpt from a Washington Post opinion piece by a Johns Hopkins bioethicist and a Yale professor of medicine and public health:

THE BEST VACCINATION STRATEGY IS SIMPLE: 

FOCUS ON AMERICANS 65 AND OLDER

Now that covid-19 vaccines are increasingly becoming available to people beyond health-care workers and those in long-term care, the question turns to who should be immunized next.  For many people, the answer is essential workers.  But while many workers face an elevated risk and should receive a vaccine soon, we believe the most ethically justified path forward is to focus on individuals 65 and older.

The primary reason to prioritize people in this age group is simple: They account for more than 80 percent of covid-19 deaths, even though they are only about 16 percent of the population.  

In other words, moving teachers and other younger people ahead of seniors will result in additional deaths.  That’s the very real cost of making vaccination decisions based on political considerations rather than the facts.

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The influence of politics on vaccination priorities in Montgomery County, Maryland’s largest county – where I’ve lived for decades – was even worse than I realized.

On January 28, the Washington Examiner broke the story that the county was prioritizing the vaccination of public-school teachers (none of has been engaged in classroom teaching since early last year) over private-school teachers (many of whom returned to the classroom months ago):

In one large Washington, D.C., suburban county, public school teachers, none of whom are in classrooms, are getting vaccinated today, while their private school counterparts, many of whom are teaching in person, have to wait. . . .

[Montgomery] County Executive Marc Elrich implied that private school teachers would be at the back of the educators’ line with a Wednesday press release: “County Executive Marc Elrich today announced that Johns Hopkins Medicine will begin vaccinating eligible county residents and Montgomery County Public School employees this week.” The release said nothing about vaccinating the nonpublic school teachers or staff, although these educators are already in classrooms.

On Thursday morning, MCPS faculty were already getting vaccinated and tweeting about it.

Meanwhile, teachers and administrators at nonpublic schools in the county reported that they had no way to make an appointment to get vaccinated. . . .

Montgomery County’s plan, it appears, amounts to this: teachers who are working from home, and whose union has resisted calls to return to the classroom any time soon, get vaccinated; teachers who are in the classroom have to wait in line.

 Looking on the bright side, MCPS 
school bus fuel bills are much lower

The Washington Post chimed in a few days later:

Cecilia Rajnic is eager to get vaccinated.  But after the second-grade teacher heard about an immunization effort that involved thousands of slots for educators in suburban Maryland, she soon learned she was not eligible.

She teaches at a Catholic school.

“How is it even possible?” she recalled thinking.  “I’m a teacher, too, and I’m teaching in person already, so why wouldn’t I have at least the same access?”

It is a question that has flared over the past week in Montgomery County as the first large group of educators in Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction is being vaccinated.  The effort was aimed at public-school employees, who might return to campuses in March.

It left out employees at private schools and child-care centers, many of whom have worked in school buildings since September or earlier.

The Maryland Department of Health promptly pointed out that Montgomery County’s discriminatory vaccination policy violated state guidelines:

“It is the health policy of the State of Maryland that nonpublic schools may not be excluded from any COVID-19 vaccine provider who is administering COVID-19 vaccine to educators,” acting Secretary of Health Dennis Schrader wrote in a letter today to all county health officers and “all COVID-19 Vaccine Providers.”

The county denied any intent to discriminate against private-school teachers, and blamed the apparent favoritism on “logistical and operational” issues.

*     *     *     *     *

I feel bad criticizing MCPS teachers too harshly – the vaccine shortage has created a difficult situation, and it’s just human nature for people to want to get to the front of the vaccination line as quickly as possible.

But I don’t feel bad criticizing the elected officials who shamelessly used their political power to ensure that they got vaccinated well before the vast majority of Marylanders did – even though doing so might have resulted in the deaths of high-risk individuals who deserved higher priority for covid shots.

A couple of months ago, the Washington Post interviewed a medical resident who said she “watched with frustration last week as inoculations were administered to scores of government leaders . . . while she and her colleagues were initially left unprotected because their hospital had received fewer than 1,000 doses of the scarce resource.”  

That resident was talking about members of Congress and their staffs – including some very young, healthy members (like 31-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), many of whom said their getting preferential treatment was a good thing because it demonstrated that the vaccine was safe and encouraged more people to get the shot.

AOC receiving the Pfizer vaccine

Many questioned that rationale.  From the Post:

[T]hat doesn’t necessarily mean rank-and-file lawmakers should receive priority, said Scott D. Halpern, a physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who teaches ethics.

“What’s the evidence that vaccinating government officials promotes public trust in the vaccine? I’m really not aware of any,” Halpern said. 

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One of AOC's most vehement critics was her fellow “Squad” member, Rep. Ilhan Omar.  

From the Independent (UK):

Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar has criticized other lawmakers, a group that includes fellow “Squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for being vaccinated before frontline workers, the elderly, and other high-risk groups.

Ms Omar, who lost her father due to coronavirus complications this summer, tweeted on Sunday: “It’s now clear that we don’t have enough vaccines for everyone and there is a shortage of supply, we have to prioritize those who need it most. That’s why it’s disturbing to see members [of Congress] be first to get the vaccine while most frontline workers, elderly and infirm in our districts, wait.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who broadcast her vaccination live on Instagram, said that the vaccine was made available to members of Congress and that they were urged to take it “as a continuity of governance plan” and described it as a “national security measure.”

(I don’t know about you, but I feel much more secure knowing that young, healthy members of Congress have been vaccinated!)

Republican Senator Rand Paul agreed with the very progressive Omar:

I think it’s unconscionable for AOC, who’s 30 years old, to be smiling gleefully and getting the vaccine when you got 85-year-old people in nursing homes who haven't gotten it.

*     *     *     *     *

Rank-and-file Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin was almost giddy after receiving his shot.  

“When I got the shot, I said to myself, ‘I have not felt this good since I voted,’” Raskin told the Maryland Matters website. “It just feels like an act of pure patriotism, and suddenly [Bruce] Springsteen’s song ‘Badlands’ kept going through my mind with the line ‘It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.’”

An “act of pure patriotism”?  How so exactly?  

“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive”?  It certainly isn’t – unless someone else is dead as a result.

Many Maryland state legislators followed Raskin’s example and happily jumped the queue to get their shots ahead of seniors and essential workers who don’t have the luxury of being able to do their business virtually.  

From Maryland Matters:

Several officials acknowledged, in interviews this week, that some members of the public may find it objectionable that [state] legislators are able to get vaccinated when the state’s supply of doses is low.

“It was something I thought a lot about,” [Maryland Senate President Bill] Ferguson said. “My parents have not been able to get a vaccine — and they’ve asked where they can go, and they’re frustrated.”

A self-described healthy 37-year-old male, Ferguson said he “really struggled on should I move forward with this.”

“At the end of the day, I went back to what we’ve been saying from the beginning, [which] is we have to follow the guidance of health experts,” he said.

Of course, that’s pure, unadulterated bullsh*t – health experts are NOT saying that healthy 37-year-old politicians should be vaccinated ahead of much more vulnerable seniors.

Maryland State Senator Arthur Ellis
was happy to jump the queue

One MoCo state senator (who obviously has very little respect for the intelligence of her constituents) followed the lead of the members of Congress who said their getting vaccinated ahead of more deserving individuals was actually a good thing because it demonstrated that the vaccine was safe and encouraged people to get the shot:

Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) got vaccinated on Friday.

“I expect to be a role model,” she said. “I hope to be able to show anyone who is nervous about getting the vaccine that I have confidence in our health care workers and in our scientists.”

(By the way, I e-mailed Senator Kagan and several other MoCo legislators to ask why they believed they deserved priority over seniors, who are at much greater risk of dying or hospitalization if infected.  So far, I’ve received no replies to my queries.)

*     *     *     *     *

I’m not a fan of my county executive, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due.  It’s only fair that I note that he declined to get his shot early – even though he’s 71 years old, which means he’s at much higher risk of hospitalization or death than people like Raskin, Ferguson, and Kagan:

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said Friday he would not get the vaccine until “all” frontline health care workers and people 75 and over have had theirs.

“I don’t do anything to put myself at risk.  I don’t need the vaccine now and there are people who are much more important to Montgomery County than me.”

Good for him.

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Today 2 or 3 lines is featuring yet another early Lennon-McCartney song that I don’t remember ever hearing before starting to work on this year’s 28 POSTS IN 28 DAYS!

“I’ll Get You” was recorded on July 1, 1963 and released as the B-side of “She Loves You” in both the UK and the U.S.  (“She Loves You” set sales record in the UK, but was largely ignored in the U.S. until the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show several months later.)

As I noted at the beginning of this post – that was a very long time ago, wasn’t it? – Lennon and McCartney apparently didn’t put that much time and effort into the lyrics of their earliest songs, including this one.

Matt Blick of Beatles Songwriting Academy – who reveres Lennon and McCartney as songwriters – called “I’ll Get You” a “lyrical crime against humanity.”

He’s 100% correct.  But what strikes me most about this song is the music, which strikes me as very un-Beatles-ish.  (I’m not sure who it sounds like, but it’s not the Beatles.)

Paul loved the song, but John was not a fan.  “That was Paul and me trying to write a song and it didn’t work out,” he once told an interviewer.

I second that emotion.

Click here to listen to “I’ll Get You.”

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Beatles – "I Should Have Known Better" (1964)

I should have known better

With a [county] like you

A few days ago, I woke up to find an e-mail from my county’s department of health that invited me to schedule an appointment for a covid-19 vaccination at a local high school.

I responded to it toot sweet, and was rewarded with an e-mail that read as follows:

this very welcome message:

Your Vaccination Appointment is Confirmed!

This message is to confirm that [2 or 3 lines] is scheduled for a vaccination appointment at:

Venue/Location: Richard Montgomery High School

Address: 250 Richard Montgomery Drive, Rockville, MD 20852

Date: 02/11/2021

Time: 09:20 am

We look forward to seeing you!

Your Vaccination Provider

I quickly showered, got dressed, and headed out – leaving my home early enough to make sure I would arrive at the vaccination site well before my appointment time.  

When I arrived at the school’s parking lot, it was absolutely full.  So I parked at a nearby bank and hustled over to join a very long line of vaccine hopefuls outside the high school.  

Here’s how Bethesda Magazine described the scene that greeted me:

PEOPLE WAITED OUTSIDE IN LINE FOR 

TWO HOURS-PLUS ON THURSDAY 

AT VACCINE SITE IN ROCKVILLE

In near-freezing temperatures Thursday afternoon, a line of people anxious to receive a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at Rockville’s Richard Montgomery High School stretched from one side of the building, past the baseball stadium and onto Fleet Street in the surrounding neighborhood.

Many in line had been waiting two hours or more, despite having an appointment for Thursday’s vaccination clinic.  And many were elderly.

“Well, it’s not fun.  The line is about three blocks,” said 79-year-old Michael Stolar.

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I didn’t stand around for two-plus hours.  As I was walking toward the end of the line, I heard a woman in an official-looking yellow jacket shouting instructions to the assembled multitudes.

“ONLY HEALTH-CARE WORKERS AND THOSE 75 YEARS OLD AND OLDER WILL BE VACCINATED TODAY – NO TEACHERS, NO ONE AGES 65-74!” she bellowed as she walked up and down the line of people waiting to get vaccinated.

“I’m not the one who makes the decisions!” she responded to those who protested that they had been given appointments for shots.  “Call your County Council member and complain!”

There was clearly no point in arguing with her or anyone else.  So I called it a day and skedaddled rather than wasting any more of my time.

*     *     *     *     *

I’ve lived in Montgomery County, Maryland – which borders Washington, DC – since 1982.

When USA Today ranked the 25 best American counties to live in, “MoCo” – which is what we residents called our beloved county for short – easily made the cut.  (There are 3243 counties and county equivalents in the U.S., so that ranking put MoCo in the top one per cent.) 

Here’s how USA Today explained why MoCo – which is the most populous of Maryland’s 24 counties, with just over one million residents – ranked so high on that list:

Montgomery County is one of the most affluent and well-educated counties in the country.  The typical Montgomery County household earns $100,352 a year, far more than the $55,322 national median household income.  An estimated 58.1% of adults in the county have a bachelor’s degree, a larger share than all but 10 U.S. counties.  Montgomery County residents also have some of the best health outcomes in the nation. The life expectancy at birth in the county is 81.5 years, approximately 2.4 years longer than the national life expectancy.

One reason that our citizenry ranks as high as it does when it comes to education is that there are a large number of government scientists who live in MoCo.

We’re home to the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (formerly known as the Bethesda Naval Hospital), The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (which includes the National Weather Service), the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards & Technology, and others too numerous to mention.

In other words, our county is chock-full of biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, epidemiologists, geneticists, meteorologists, physicists, physicians, statisticians, and other assorted scientific types.

Given all that brainpower, you would think that MoCo could administer a covid-19 vaccination program in an organized and efficient manner.

GUESS AGAIN!

*     *     *     *     *

The last few weeks, my Facebook news feed has been full of “Woo-hoo, I got my covid vaccination today!” announcements from friends and relatives who live in or around my humble hometown of Joplin, Missouri.  (Most of them have gotten not just their first shots, but also their second shots.)

Meanwhile, those of us who are in the same age group here in MoCo sit and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait.  

Why is that?  There’s no simple answer to that question – “It’s complicated,” as they say.

But one reason things are so f*cked up in MoCo is that the county and the state are NOT on the same page when it comes to vaccination priorities.

*     *     *     *     *

Last October, the Maryland Department of Health published a draft covid-19 vaccination plan that seemed to me to make sense.  Here’s an excerpt:

The initial highest priority groups may include:

– Healthcare personnel likely to be directly exposed to or treat people with suspected or confirmed covid-19

– People at increased risk for severe illness from covid-19, including those with underlying medical  conditions and people 65 years of age and older

– Other essential workers, who by the nature of their position, are unable to reduce their risk of exposure (e.g., first responders) 

But somewhere along the way, politics reared its ugly head, and the state in its infinite wisdom decided on a totally F.U.B.A.R. set of vaccination priorities.

At the top of the revised vaccination-priority heap are the members of group 1A – health care workers, nursing home residents and staff, and first responders.  (I’ve got NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with any of those groups getting the highest priority when it comes to vaccinations.)

Next comes group 1B – which includes those who are over 75, those in assisted living and other “congregate facilities” (a term that appears to have been chosen to obfuscate the fact that it includes prison inmates), and those in the “education” and “continuity of government” groups – which includes many elected officials, including members of the state legislature.  (We’ll take a closer look at the utter bullsh*t being spread by some state legislators to justify why they deserve special treatment – possibly at the cost of the lives of other Marylanders – in the next 2 or 3 lines.)  

Adults aged 65-74 – who were correctly referred to in the original draft priority document as being “at increased risk for severe illness from covid-19” – have been demoted to group 1C.

In theory, we in the 65-74 age group in Maryland are now eligible to be vaccinated.  But because there aren’t enough vaccine doses here to take care of all the 1B group yet, we’re still waiting.

*     *     *     *     *

The Washington Post recently published an opinion piece by a Johns Hopkins bioethicist and a Yale medical school professor that was titled “The best vaccination strategy is simple: Focus on Americans 65 and older.”

That’s because people over 65 account for only 16 per cent of the population but more than 80 per cent of covid deaths – their risk of death or hospitalization is MANY TIMES higher than thirty- and forty-somethings.  (You can click here to read the article in its entirety.)

But Maryland has chosen to flip-flop on vaccination priorities rather than following what those experts recommended in that Washington Post piece.  

“Follow the science” is our official mantra.  “Follow the science, except when the science conflicts with political considerations” is closer to the truth. 

The clearest proof of that is the state’s decision to move government officials and teachers into group 1B – where they have priority over the 65-74 group, whose members are at MUCH GREATER risk of dying if they get covid.  

Keeping the courts functioning is important, of course.  But that doesn’t mean that judges and their staffs deserve higher vaccination priority than seniors and other essential workers – like grocery store employees, who can’t do their jobs remotely.  EVER HEAR OF A ZOOM CALL, YOUR HONOR?

(By the way, the Maryland State Bar Association has demanded that ALL attorneys be given the same high priority as judges.  Doing that is necessary for the proper functioning of the justice system, don’t you know?  That’s hypocrisy with a capital “H,” of course.  Most attorneys – including me – never go into a courtroom, and can easily avoid coronavirus exposure while still doing our jobs.  And even litigators can handle their business – depositions, hearings, etc. – through video conference calls.)  

*     *     *     *     *

The MoCo county executive and the head of the county health department had the gall to blame we, the people, for the snafu at the vaccination clinic where I had the appointment that turned out not to be an appointment.  

It comes as no surprise, of course, that they failed to man up and accept responsibility for the mess, but chose instead to blame the victims of their incompetence.

MoCo's chief health officer and county
executive say the snafu was our fault 

The county’s spin is that the problems were caused by people sharing vaccination sign-up links that were not intended to be shared – resulting in a lot of people signing up when they weren’t eligible to sign up yet.

All I know is that I filled out the registration page – including my birthdate – and was sent a confirmation by the county.

If I wasn’t eligible because I’m too young, why didn’t they reject my application and tell me to try again later?

Instead, I was sent a personalized confirmation with a specific appointment time.

According to MoCo, that’s the great state of Maryland’s fault.  MoCo used a website created by the state to book vaccination appointments.  Because the 65-74 group is eligible under current state guidelines, we were allowed to sign up for this clinic even though MoCo had planned all along to only give shots to health care workers and the 75-and-over crowd.

To be honest, I had my doubts about the whole thing from the outset.  It seemed a little too easy, given how screwed up things had been up to this point.

To quote today’s featured song, “I should have known better.”

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Of course, the fact that some ineligible people were given appointments when they shouldn’t have been was only one of the problems at the vaccination site I was shooed away from – despite being given an appointment.

For example, why did eligible people have to wait in line outside in the freezing cold for two-plus hours to get shots?  

That’s a problem that’s unrelated to the crowd of ineligibles, who were promptly sent home – leaving only eligible people to wait in line.  If the number of eligible vaccine recipients and the number of vaccine doses matched up – as they should have after all the ineligible people were sent home – why did things run so far behind schedule?  

I’m not surprised that the process didn’t run like clockwork – no one would complain about a reasonable wait beyond his or her appointment time.  But to be given, say, a 10:00 AM appointment and then have to wait in line in the freezing cold until 1:00 PM?  

How did that happen?  I’m guessing the county didn’t arrange for enough nurses (or others who could administer shots) to be there, or that they didn’t get everything set up in time.  

This wasn’t the first vaccination clinic that MoCo has had, and I do know that some of the previous clinics at other high schools have gone off without a hitch – no masses of ineligible vaccine hunters showing up, plenty of shot-givers to handle the crowds, etc.  That’s why I suspect that it was the county that did most of the pooch-screwing this morning.

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Things could be worse, I suppose: I might live in California.

From the San Jose Mercury-News:

CALIFORNIA’S MEDICAL MARIJUANA 

RETAIL WORKERS MOVE TO HEAD 

OF VACCINE LINE, AHEAD OF TEACHERS

It was with a sense of accomplishment that young cannabis entrepreneur Jerred Kiloh scheduled his first COVID-19 vaccine appointment for Feb. 11 in San Francisco.

Kiloh, owner of the Higher Path Collective in Sherman Oaks and president of the United Cannabis Business Association, was one of the movers and shakers responsible for nudging medical marijuana retail workers toward the front of California’s vaccine eligibility line, before some educators, emergency workers and food and agriculture workers. . . .

“Cannabis delivery drivers before school bus drivers and teachers?” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner tweeted in response to a Los Angeles Times column. “Makes no sense to me.”

Edison High School teacher Mike Walters said teachers are too essential to be passed over by cannabis industry personnel when it comes to COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

“Teachers should be prioritized ahead of the cannabis dispensaries,” said Walters, who teaches U.S. history and government at the Huntington Beach school. “We’re kind of on the front lines with these kids on a daily basis. I hope the quicker we get this vaccine to teachers then the quicker we can get all kids back in the classroom, instead of just a few of them.”

The Biden Administration’s new CDC director has said that it is possible to reopen schools safely even if teachers aren’t vaccinated – so I’m skeptical of the decision in Maryland and elsewhere to give teachers priority over seniors, who are MUCH more likely to die from covid if they are infected.  (By the way, the high-priority “education” group in Maryland isn’t limited to classroom teachers – it includes support staff who may have zero contact with students.)

But this time, I’m on the side of the teachers – to give marijuana dispensary workers vaccination priority over teachers seems ridiculous. 

Of course, I’ve never been a big pot guy. 

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That was quite the rant, wasn’t it?

Delivering such a rant is tiring.  But fear not – I’m not too tired to deliver yet another diatribe about a much-beloved Lennon-McCartney song. 

“I Should Have Known Better” was released on the A Hard Day’s Night album in July 10, 1964.  It was released a few days later as the B-side of the “A Hard Day’s Night” single – which was the fifth of the Beatles’ six singles to reach #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1964.

“I Should Have Known Better” was a typical “Beatlemania”-era Lennon-McCartney song.  It had a catchy tune and a bouncy beat, and it mixed in an occasional minor chord to keep things interesting – but the lyrics were nothing special.

Like most of the early Lennon-McCartney songs we’ve been discussing, this one is a “songlet” that would have been unacceptably short without some gratuitous repetition. 

Let’s consider the structure of the record, which is 2:44 long – which is probably about average for a track of that era:

Verse 1

Verse 2

Bridge

Verse 3

Guitar solo (based on the verse)

Verse 2 (repeated)

Bridge (repeated)

Outro

Strip away the redundant repetition and do a little rearranging, and you get this:

Verse 1

Verse 2

Bridge

Guitar solo

Verse 3

Outro

That would make the song about 2:00 long.

You may disagree, but I’d rather have a tight little two-minute record than one with 45 seconds of superfluous padding.

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Click here to listen to “I Should Have Known Better.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: