Trump’s ‘plan’ to distribute COVID-19 vaccines is a predictable clusterf – k

In the United States’ fight against COVID-19, there is good news and there is “Forced to Sit Beside Don Jr. over dinner and listen to the intricate details of his workout schedule ”- type news, that is, news you never want to hear. On the good news front, a number of drugmakers have said early data shows their vaccines are very effective in preventing the novel coronavirus. The less good news: Donald Trump is still president, which means we’ll probably have to wait at least seven weeks until the federal government has a life-saving drug delivery plan that inspires confidence, not fear.

According to Politico, the Trump administration has essentially decided to hand over the mammoth and intimidating task of providing vaccines to populations in individual states, a strategy it used to tackle the pandemic this spring that led to disastrous results. While state and federal officials agree that the country’s 21 million healthcare workers should be the first to receive doses, “there is no consensus on how to balance the needs of other high-risk groups, including the 53 million adults aged 65 or older, 87 million essential workers and more than 100 million people with health conditions that increase their vulnerability to the virus. Trump and his company have told governors they have the final say in who to get vaccinated and when; it also chose to “allocate rare early doses based on the total state population,” which will ultimately lead to difficult choices in states with a greater proportion of at-risk residents. (The virus has disproportionately affected black, Latin American and Indigenous communities in terms of hospitalizations and deaths.) Experts are concerned that could undermine confidence in the population’s vaccination effort, whose success depends on persuading large numbers of Americans to get vaccinated. (Regarding any hope of obtaining herd immunity, about 200 million Americans would need to be vaccinated and / or infected; last month only about half of the country said it ‘would get.)
“States will have to choose who will receive the first doses”, Josh Michaud, an associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Politico. “It is very evident that states are in different places when it comes to planning and identifying who these people are.” Moncef Slaoui, who heads the government’s Operation Warp Speed ​​program, said he “doesn’t expect states to make uniform decisions. Some may prefer long-term care facilities or the elderly, while others may prioritize their health workers. It would be wrong to vaccinate 18 year olds first. I hope no one is doing this. But otherwise, they are shades of gray.

Eric Toner, a senior researcher from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the federal government gives states the autonomy they need to allocate vaccines in ways that meet the needs of their residents … But that autonomy translates into uneven deployment between states, it could undermine the already fragile public confidence in the government’s response to the coronavirus and possibly even the vaccines themselves, Michaud said.
The federal government originally told Illinois officials that the state should plan to receive an initial shipment of about 400,000 doses once the FDA clears a shot. But in recent days, federal officials have reduced that figure to around 80,000 doses, Ngozi Ezike, the director of the Illinois department of public health, said Tuesday during a press briefing.

While most of the Trump administration’s hiccups can usually be attributed to incompetence, this speaks volumes about the federal government’s current reputation that incompetence is the key. better explanation of vaccine distribution planning so far. As a member of Joe BidenThe COVID task force said Vanity Fairfrom Katherine Eban Earlier this month, there were fears that the Trump team deliberately hampered the transition for weeks to “make timely vaccine delivery nearly impossible,” leaving Trump “with the victory to oversee its successful development, and a new President Biden with the failure to distribute it.

Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to reach terrifying new heights thanks in large part to Donald Trump and the head of the COVID-19 task force Mike Pencethe decision to do nothing to stop it. (Last month, the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows literally told CNN, “We’re not going to control the pandemic.”) According to Trump’s CDC, hospitalization rates are higher now at no time in the past nine months, with some states being pushed to full capacity. More than 267,000 people have died in the United States While Trump could still prevent people from contracting, spreading and dying of a miserable disease by urging them to wear masks and avoid family gatherings during the holidays, he would obviously rather Americans suffer than admit Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health experts know what they’re talking about. As Le New York Times Put the: