On the day the 14 LDS Leaders got vaccinated, the vaccine had already been given to almost 200,000 people in Utah. So I'm not seeing how vaccines weren't made "available to others." And you say "select group", but you don't mention that the "select group" fell squarely into the state's permitted tiers for vaccination (and some of them are in the highest-risk group).
Suppose you have a religion in an area that has 500,000 members (many of them elderly), and a religion that has 50 members in an area. If your goal is to set an example (and give confidence) to the most people possible, do you really think publicly vaccinating the leader of 50 people will have the same benefit as publicly vaccinating the leader of 500,000 people? Sorry, but I'm just not seeing it. It seems perfectly logical and scientific to vaccinate the leader of the larger group.If it's on the basis that they were religious leaders who would promote the getting of the vaccine to their congregants, then prioritising other religious leaders would be equally beneficial - but that wasn't done.
In Utah, it looks like there are ~1.9m Mormons, followed by 160k Catholics, and then 12k Baptists (and the Baptists aren't led by a single leadership structure in the area). So maybe the Catholic leaders and some prominent Baptist leaders could have been included. But statistically speaking, you're looking at diminishing public health returns at that point.
To be clear, I'm not saying that other religious leaders shouldn't also have been vaccinated. That's what they did in AZ. So I would agree with you that it would have been good to have other religious leaders included in the vaccination event. I'm with you there. But that doesn't mean there was anything inherently wrong with the LDS leaders (who were in the proper tier) getting vaccinated.
People over 70 were one of the stated priority groups. There was nothing wrong with vaccinating people over the age of 70, even if they're Mormon. And again, "Health Authorities" all over the country and the world freely acknowledge the benefit of getting prominent religious leaders to be publicly vaccinated as examples. Giving religious leaders "preference" to be publicly vaccinated is simply good public health policy.Religious leadership is not one of Utah's stated key priority groups. If the Utah Health Authority hasn't afforded them the privilege (and it looks a lot like they didn't) then we're left with them taking the decision themselves.
For example, here's what one hospital in Miami is doing. Does the idea of these Church groups getting this privilege bother you? Or is it just good, scientific, public health policy? There are countless examples from all over the world of how religions are an important part of getting vaccines effectively accepted, and publicly vaccinating religious leaders is part of that process:
Every week the hospital opens up a limited number of appointments for 50 partner churches, synagogues and mosques to register members of their own congregations, as well as family members, friends and members of neighboring houses of worship. For now, the slots are limited to those 65 and older.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/corona ... 70010.html
Sure, it would have been great to have other faith leaders get publicly vaccinated as well. But ecumenism is a different issue than public health. Given the choice, I would choose public health over ecumenism (although it would be great to have both).Had they taken it upon themselves to gather all religious leaders to their health facility as a cross-denominal initiative to lead the way on vaccination (with the approval of the Utah Health Authority) then that would've been the positive message you seem to be desperately trying to filter from this example of self importance by LDS Leaders. But they didn't do that.