New Hampshire has started offering at-home covid tests at state liquor stores. For those of you out-of-state, our lower-priced wines and liquors are a major NH revenue source. When you read these odd statistics about how people in NH drink more than anyone else in the region, it is based on this. Our neighboring states drive across to load up their trunks with cheap(er) liquor, and even tourists from farther away, like Quebec, Nova Scotia, New York, or whatever fill up their suitcases as well. As with driving too far out of your way to get cheap gas, many of these people are losing money because of the travel costs of $10 to save $6 or whatever, but it works out great for us. Come on by.
Yet as soon as I heard about the covid tests it occurred to me that our pro-vaccine governor, Chris Sununu (like all the Sununus, he has an actual advanced degree from MIT in a hard science and can do arithmetic) missed a trick here. Maybe not a year ago, when vaccines were first out and we had to work in volume, but shortly after that, we should have had a program of making vaccines available at some of the major state liquor stores. Opponents would have shuddered, clenched their teeth, cursed under their breath, but who would have openly opposed it? Maybe those who only cared about political power and not actually about vaccines, which are just a convenient cause? I say we risk it. Liberals who actually want to see lots of people vaccinated (and who go to the liquor store just as often as the conservative themselves, I'm sure. May more, because way fewer Baptists and Mormons), would grudgingly nod. And while people are there, especially at the highway toll plaza stores, which also have Common Man restaurants, rest rooms, gas/electrical charging, wearable merch and souvenirs, ATMS, tourist info, and spacious, well laid-out liquor stores - unlike the nostalgic but crowded and confusing Massachusetts "packies*" - they buy expensive scotches and French wines at considerable discount. Win-win.
My wife is trying to text Sununu as we speak with the idea.
The booster, that I got scheduled for when it was convenient for me, was administered by a pharmacist. and I did (silently) wonder how experienced this person was with the task.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I had a friend who was so fearful of the possibility of air-embolism by injection that she told me lots of disaster stories, so I probably have a displaced risk sensitivity on this issue.