Gov. Lamont’s inner circle agonized over image, messaging amid controversial age-based rollout of Connecticut’s COVID-19 vaccine program, documents show

In the days surrounding Connecticut’s abrupt shift to an age-based COVID-19 vaccination program, top officials in the Lamont administration focused heavily on the public perception of the controversial decision to skip priority for frontline workers and the medically fragile, documents show.

Texts and emails obtained by the Courant reveal an administration hashing out the minutiae of the public announcement, watching the press closely and fretting that the carefully arranged choreography might be bungled by others — including by Gov. Ned Lamont himself.

“Please get me on all the shows,” the state’s chief operating officer, Josh Geballe, texted another staffer several hours after the announcement. “I want to drive this home.”

In public office, image consciousness is standard fare; monitoring the reaction of the public and press is par for the political course.

But this was no standard decision. In switching to an age-based rollout, Connecticut’s officials were taking an unprecedented step.

Supporters of the age-based plan have hailed it as the driver of Connecticut’s continued nation-leading speed in vaccinations. But the plan also came with potential pitfalls. Not only were Connecticut officials risking alienating the frontline workers and high-risk residents who would no longer be prioritized, they were also defying the guidance of the state’s own advisory group and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nor could the stakes have been higher. With the coronavirus already claiming 7,562 lives by the Feb. 22 announcement, the lives and wellbeing of all of Connecticut’s residents hung in the balance.

The conversations within the administration provide a detailed account of what — and who — top officials worried about as they prepared to upend a crucial part of the state’s pandemic response. The documents also provide a unique window into a decision-making process that has largely been shielded from public view since COVID-19 began its deadly tear across Connecticut more than a year ago.

Concerns about the governor, lieutenant governor

On the day of the announcement, an official release was scheduled to hit reporters’ inboxes at about 3 p.m., one hour ahead of the governor’s press briefing at which the new rollout would be further explained.

But that morning, officials worried among themselves that the governor would go off-script and drop the news at an unrelated morning press conference, according to a group chat. That chat included Geballe, acting public health Commissioner Dr. Deidre Gifford, the governor’s chief of staff Paul Mounds and the governor’s spokesperson Max Reiss.

“Will the Gov let the cat out of the bag in Norwalk this AM?” texted Reiss. “I’d prefer he not.”

“I hope not,” Geballe wrote back. “Someone should talk to him.”

The staffers’ concerns weren’t entirely new — Lamont has a tendency to drop hints or make partial announcements ahead of the official announcements, leading at times to incomplete news reports of impending changes to the state’s reopening or vaccination plans.

So on the morning of the age-based rollout announcement, officials were taking no chances.

“Remind him that we’re spending the whole morning pre-briefing key stakeholders and lining up supportive quotes so we don’t want everyone hearing about it for the for the first time through the media at the 10 o’clock press conference,” Geballe texted to the group.

Reiss reported back to the group chat that the governor “is in a good spot.” Lamont held that morning’s press conference without referencing the impending news drop.

But the worry soon pivoted to another official.

The staffers in the group chat had similar concerns about Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz — but for a different reason. Bysiewicz was also scheduled for an unrelated press event that morning, and the staffers worried that she might reference frontline essential workers, who were originally scheduled to be next in line.

“Anyone brief the LG?” Geballe texted the group.

“No,” Gifford responded.

“Not me,” Reiss said. “She has press at 11:30 with [the Department of Economic and Community Development].”

“Yea, need to make sure she is not talking about frontline workers,” Geballe wrote.

Reiss again responded that he could handle the conversation. At her press event that morning, Bysiewicz didn’t reference frontline essential workers.

‘Let’s buckle up’

Aware of the potential backlash to the age-based approach, administration officials spent days making sure the new rollout plan’s messaging was clear.

“And let’s buckle up for more of these type of stories tomorrow,” Mounds, the governor’s chief of staff, texted to Geballe, Gifford and Reiss the day before the announcement, with a link to a story about a high-risk resident pushing for vaccination priority.

Officials then spent announcement day working on “lining up supportive quotes,” as Geballe put it in an email, to round out the press release that was scheduled for 3 p.m. In addition to a representative from the business and hospital worlds, the Lamont administration wanted the press release to include a supportive comment from the co-chairs of the state vaccine advisory group’s allocations subcommittee.

But they appeared to be struggling to get full buy-in from co-chair Nichelle Mullins, who is also the president of Hartford’s Charter Oak Health Center and has been vocal about centering equity in the vaccine rollout.

“Nichelle is still mulling but I think will get there,” Gifford wrote in a Sunday evening email, less than 24 hours before the official announcement.

Mullins, who declined to comment for this story, did eventually sign off on the plan. But she and co-chair Zita Lazzarini, a UConn Health professor, stopped just short of full-throated approval. That sparked debate within the Lamont administration.

After state officials sent a suggested statement to Mullins and Lazzarini, to be attributed to them in the state’s official press release, the co-chairs sent back a revised statement.

The revisions added in some tepid language, including a phrase that said the age-based plan was “not ideal” as well as a nod to the “inequities that have accrued so far” in the vaccination process. The revision also removed a phrase, written by state officials, that asserted that the new plan would help by “allowing more individuals to access the vaccine.”

“I’m not sure we want to use this,” Gifford said of the revised statement, in an email to other state officials on the afternoon of the announcement.

“I don’t think it’s terrible,” countered Maura Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Health. “There is no ideal system for doing this and not everyone is going to be 100% happy (even the co-chairs of the subcommittee) so I don’t think it’s detrimental to the press release.”

Geballe responded that he leaned toward the same conclusion, and said that excluding the co-chairs entirely could cause reporters to “read into that too.”

“Any chance they’d be willing to remove the ‘not ideal’ bit?” Geballe added.

Reiss responded with another vote for using the revision.

“I think it’s fine because we’re not pretending that what we’re doing is perfect but it shows an effort to be socially responsible,” Reiss wrote. “I say leave it in.”

The co-chairs’ statement, with their revisions intact, was added to the official press release, which was scheduled to go public at 3 p.m.

But less than an hour before the scheduled drop time came another unexpected swerve.

Shortly after 2 p.m. on Monday, Reiss texted in the same group message — with Geballe, Gifford and Mounds — that a first selectman had tweeted out the state’s new age-based eligibility plan.

“Who wants to call and yell at her,” Geballe texted back.

After the group decided to handle the mishap by sending out the press release early, Geballe again wrote to Reiss, “After you do that please call [the first selectman] and yell at her.”

Mounds responded that he would call her, and then followed up by saying that she had agreed to take down the tweet.

“She apologized but what the [expletive],” Mounds wrote.

A continued push

Following the announcement, the reaction was immediate — and split.

Some echoed the administration’s argument that older residents are at the highest risk of dying and that prioritizing based on age is the simplest, most efficient approach. Others argued that the age-based plan was a recipe for racial inequities and that it didn’t offer protection to some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Media outlets across the state featured the stories of those who felt abandoned by the change in direction, but some also featured opinion columns that praised the shift.

Amid the incoming tide of attention, the administration’s messaging campaign shifted from internal to public-facing.

In the days following the announcement, Geballe and Gifford went on a media tour — they appeared on local TV stations and radio shows and in print newspapers across the state.

“We concluded we needed to call a different play,” Geballe said during a Feb. 28 appearance on Fox 61. “At the end of the day, age is what most carefully and closely correlates with severe illness and death. It’s very simple, everybody knows what their birthday is, it’s very easy to prove.”

Geballe also took to social media to criticize media reports he disagreed with, including a Courant article, and to highlight reports he did agree with.

Over the past six weeks, Connecticut has continued through its age-based rollout and, on April 1, opened eligibility to all Connecticut residents.

For some, recent weeks have solidified their support of the state’s approach, particularly as Connecticut has remained among the top states for the number of vaccines administered. Hospital officials have said the plan spared them from burdensome verification requirements and educators have praised the state for prioritizing safe school reopening.

But critics say that the age-based plan disenfranchised younger high-risk residents, and focused on efficiency over equity. The state’s vaccination data also continues to show stark disparities along racial and ethnic lines.

That debate is less pressing at this point, with everyone over 16 in the state now eligible to sign on for a vaccine. But the state continues to promote and defend its Feb. 22 decision.

On April 5, Lamont’s Twitter account posted a clip of Dr. Scott Gottlieb praising the age-based scheme at a state press briefing. And while Geballe doesn’t post on Twitter as often, three of his last five posts or reposts were complimentary of the age-based plan. Most recently, on April 8, Geballe retweeted a post from a Yale School of Management publication that interviewed him about the plan.

“Has there been pushback about the choice to focus on age for vaccine eligibility?” the Yale interviewer asked Geballe.

“Yes, there has been, and it’s understandable,” Geballe responded in part. “The tough decision to prioritize by age understandably frustrated people who thought that they were going to be up next or who continue to live in fear of COVID, but it was clearly the strategy that was best to save the most lives.”

Emily Brindley can be reached at ebrindley@courant.com.