Agreed that society should be more critical of mistakes that put people's lives at risk. But, this decision scores fairly low by that measure. If I had to guess, 0.00001 residents would have died due to this error. There are many more attention-worthy mistakes to be critical of if this is the main concern.
I think the real reason this story is getting attention is because people are assuming selfish intent. I think this assumption is probably wrong.
Residents are also frontline workers who would be some of the most effective in stopping the spread of the virus once vaccinated. Second and third order effects should have been considered in a well crafted algorithm. And your conjecture that it was not selfish hasn’t been proven, either.
I think the real reason this story is getting attention is because people are assuming selfish intent. I think this assumption is probably wrong.