Where’s the Vaccine Plan?
Terry H. Schwadron
Dec. 6, 2020
The most unsettling news over the weekend was the obvious.
In the midst of the spiraling death toll of coronavirus contagion, here was President-elect Joe Biden reporting after his administration’s briefings with White House task force members that the Trump administration has “no detailed plan that we’ve seen, anyway, as to how you get the vaccine out of a container, into an injection syringe, into somebody’s arm.”
He added the other obvious, that coming up with a plan that at once coordinates and still defers to 50 individual state distribution paths, that simultaneously arranges for priority-setting for recipients, protects large numbers of further contagions and determines how to reach skeptical parts of the population is going to be, well, difficult.
What we know after months of supposed planning is amazingly sparse, other than that all agree that the first tranche of vaccines to health care workers, mostly at hospitals, and to nursing home residents and staff.
Both reflect accepting populations that are pretty motivated and extremely static. No one is going to have to chase after these populations or persuade them of safety or preach the gospel of inoculation.
Indeed, in those rare moments now when Donald Trump stops talking election fraud long enough to take a breath, he is stepping forward for adoration in the spotlight for having rushed vaccine development by scientists in private companies out of his realm to complete this round of vaccine development.
Meanwhile, there are almost as many questions about vaccine distribution this week as there were six months ago.
Hey, It’s the States
We do know that the federal government is stepping lightly, ensuring only that the military will be involved in overseeing delivery to state lines and no further, and paying the few vaccine companies billions of dollars to ensure millions of doses. Then it is all on the states — who may or may not have enough money to oversee distribution to hospitals, druggists, doctors’ offices or public distribution centers.
This week, the White House seemed more upset about the FDA equivalent in Britain approving Pfizer’s vaccine days before the U.S. approval, expected within the next several days.
Guess what, Team Trump? We don’t care about credit — we just want the pandemic addressed, and expect that the Trump folks, the Biden folks, the transition folks, the military, drug stores chains and doctors have figured out how to facilitate production, transportation and actual injection. Just to make things interesting, seasonal flu also is projected to crest just as Biden takes office.
As it turns out, apparently this is not fully in place, even now as we pass 280,000 deaths and 14 million American cases. The questions won’t quit:
— As things stand, CVS and Walgreens seem to have the biggest role as injection sites. Are there enough, are they in the right places, do they have the right refrigeration? To achieve even the levels of coronavirus testing we have now, we have public centers in all the states, including drive-throughs, tent centers and every corner medical site. But we have done about 130 million tests; this involves 660 million injections. Where’s the vaunted military?
— We still don’t know how effective the vaccines are for different types of patients — or, per the word of Pfizer’s chief executive, whether vaccinated patients can still carry the virus to others. With all the international attention on efficacy, we don’t know if the vaccines will keep us from further spreading the disease or fully understand any side effects after three months of inoculation?
— Other than the offer by three past presidents to take the vaccine on television, where’s the non-medical campaign to persuade Americans to drop their skepticism and to accept the need to take the vaccine? How is Trump, himself an ant-vaxxer in the past, himself someone who eschews masks and social distancing, planning to persuade us all to want the vaccine? Or is this, too, something to which he simply turns his back, and expects Biden to handle — if Biden actually is the next president on Jan. 20 despite the endless campaign to stop him.
— Can employers require vaccines for working? Will we have some kind of I-took-the-vaccine cards? Who even decides?
— Has anyone told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that both outgoing and incoming administrations are promising vaccines offered for “free,” that is tax-paid?
You wouldn’t know it from his continuing reluctance to back government spending to the states to underwrite vaccine distribution as well as emergency services?
Election Fraud Madness
Even as we’re worrying (or not) getting vaccines to the arms of America, Trump continues to spend his time flailing about election results — including holding a large rally in Georgia ostensibly to support two Senate candidates. Once again, the images show that mask-wearing at this rally or at the holiday parties in the White House and at the State Department was rare.
Passing the latest grim milestones for American coronavirus deaths seems insufficient to turn Trump’s head towards the obvious need for public health measures. The U.S. Supreme Court showed in its 5–4 decision last week that it cared more about protecting theoretical freedoms of religions — the case itself was declared moot by expiration of limitations — over any need for public health protections.
Is it too much to think that questions of public contagion can rise above politics, for us to demand that government have an effective plan in place?
How about Making America Work again.
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