Our View: Teamwork helps spread the vaccine

Last week’s joint effort between Carlton County and the Fond du Lac Band shows how two communities, working together, can have a significant impact on members of both.

Kudos to the Fond du Lac Band for reaching out to the county to share 500 coronavirus vaccines sent to Fond du Lac by the state. They didn’t have to do that, and could have reserved the doses solely for their own members. Instead, they recognized that we truly are one community, and what benefits county residents often affects Band members.

“Having the opportunity to vaccinate our neighbors will increase the overall health and well-being of our community,” Fond du Lac Human Services associate director Nate Sandman was quoted in last week’s Pine Knot News.

It took the efforts of many people to bring the vaccination event together, and we’re impressed with how smoothly the operation came together to serve more than 450 county residents. The event was put together on short notice, and required the cooperation of all sorts of people and organizations. “We only had a couple planning meetings to work through the logistics of how to move up to 500 people through the convention center in a day,” said Carlton County Public Health and Human Services director Dave Lee.

Last Thursday’s clinic was also the product of a year’s worth of work and planning by both the county and the band — both have Emergency Operating Committees that have been very active during the pandemic and they’ve learned from experience over the past year. You can read more details of the event on Page 5 of this week’s Pine Knot News, but we felt this story deserved a little more accolade from those of us in the community who benefitted from the work of the organizers and participants.

The people getting vaccinated deserve a pat on the back too, because getting a shot can be unnerving and requires one to trust the science. The reasons for getting a shot run the gamut from the personal — to avoid illness, a desire for in-person contact — to the overall good of society by stopping the disease through herd immunity. Whatever your motivation, thank you.

Competition is good, but cooperation is better. We appreciate all of the medical personnel and public health officials from Fond du Lac and Carlton County for being so focused on the health of our overall community. This is further evidence that we all do better when we all work together.