Like most farmworkers, she is undocumented. Public health officials are adamant that everyone needs to be vaccinated regardless of immigration status if the country is to have a chance at stopping or slowing the virus’ spread. From a public health standpoint, it would be dangerous to exclude undocumented immigrants. “Herd immunity is agnostic to whether or not people have documents,” said Sandro Galea, the dean of the School of Public Health at Boston University. “And if we care about getting back to normal, which is getting herd immunity, we collectively have an interest in having as many people immunized as possible as quickly as possible." "For us to be barring specific groups from being immunized for what are fundamentally -- perhaps legal reasons, we can argue about them -- flies in the face of good common sense," he said. Debates over who is or who is not entitled to the vaccine are irrelevant, he said. The problem is solely a pragmatic one. “The virus does not know who has papers and who does not," he said. "It’s going to spread no matter what.
Read the full piece here.