Merrill Gay helped his elderly mother, sequestered alone at home, make an appointment last week to get a coronavirus vaccination. Meanwhile, the thousands of child care workers who are members of the coalition he leads, the Early Childhood Alliance, have been told they will have to wait more than a month for their turn to make an appointment. “A person living by themselves isn’t really high risk,” said Gay. “It’s really easy to slip into the, ‘Oh yeah, old folks are more likely to die from this,’ as opposed to looking at the data and [asking], ‘Well, demographically, are they really?'”