The federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has voted to recommend that the Centers for Disease Control recommend state governments give the new COVID-19 vaccines to certain groups before others. “If we had vaccine for every person in the United States, it would be an easy decision,” ACIP chairman Jose Romero said. “But we don’t, and that’s why we have to make a prioritization scheme for the initial set of vaccines.” The committee voted to prioritize health care workers and nursing‐home residents and staff. But not without some uncertainty. The Washington Post reports, “several panel members say[] there was insufficient vaccine safety and efficacy data to support immunizing [nursing‐home residents] right away.” The Post continues:
"The advisory committee has expressed support for, but not yet voted on, the likely order for three groups who should get the shots next: essential workers (about 87 million people, not including health‐care personnel) in Phase 1b, and people 65 and older (about 53 million) and adults with underlying medical conditions that put them at higher risk of getting very sick with covid‐19 (about 100 million) in Phase 1c."
Among those ACIP considers “essential workers” are “people who work in meatpacking plants and other food‐processing facilities; police and firefighters; teachers; and the transportation industry.”
Who should get the vaccines first? There are no easy answers to the question, nor does there appear to be a libertarian answer.
Consider the facts at hand.
At first, the demand for a COVID-19 vaccine will vastly outstrip the supply. If this were a typical private good—even an essential good amid an emergency, like bottled water after a hurricane—libertarians would say the government should let private actors decide where the available resources should go, and not intervene through “price gouging” laws or other means of rationing. Letting market forces ration the available stock would do the best (not perfect, just best) job of putting those resources to their highest‐valued use and would expand the stock of that resource. As consumers bid up the price, more producers would enter the market.
A vaccine is not a pure private good, however. It has positive externalities, which means that because consumers do not capture all the benefits of using vaccines, market forces alone might not produce the socially optimal quantity. Vaccines are even more interesting because their positive externalities come from eliminating the negative externalities of other activities. Since the negative externalities a vaccine eliminates are literally violent physical assaults with a deadly pathogen, there’s a stronger argument for government playing a role in the allocation of vaccines than bottled water or even many other goods with positive externalities (e.g., fireworks displays).
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/whats-libertarian-position-how-distribute-vaccines
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