In California, the administration of the coronavirus vaccine has hit a healthcare worker bottleneck: There simply aren’t enough nurses and doctors to stab people in the arm. A recent initiative seeks to remedy this problem by employing the unique talents of fourth graders who like stabbing themselves with pencils.

“It’s a horrific disaster,” said the lock of silvery, gelled hair most recently pulled out by California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We have thousands of doses backed up with no one to stab them into the arms of anxious citizens!”

A lowly (and recently bald) employee at the California Department of Public Health, Mr. Carmichael Koober, informed The Daily that the department had been experimenting with all manner of remedies. “We tried loading vaccines into automatic weapons and shooting them at people, creating an educational pamphlet to help people do it themselves, but nothing worked,” cried an exasperated Mr. Koober.

Reports even indicate that Stanford’s own professor Robert Sapolski, famed for his talents blow-darting baboons in the African bush, was enlisted to do much the same with doses of the vaccine. Finally, a solution was found in fourth graders who like stabbing themselves with pencils.

“It makes sense, if you think about it,” said Timmy Steven, who said he intends to be pre-med in college. “I spend upwards of several hours per day inserting long, sharp objects into my forearm in order to stave off mind-numbing boredom. Sounds pretty familiar.”

Mr. Koober confirmed that the California National Guard has set in motion plans to embed fourth graders within paratrooper units in order to airlift ten-year-olds across the state.

In other news, the fifth grader who ripped their eraser in half and then re-assembled it using a stapler will be performing your appendectomy.

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.