“Biden has made ending the pandemic a centerpiece of his early presidency, vowing an all-out federal effort to turn the tide of the crisis within the next several months.
But even as he signed a flurry of directives laying the foundation for that response, White House officials have sought to tamp down expectations — blaming the Trump administration for leaving behind a situation that they insisted was far worse than expected, despite months of transition meetings and planning.
“What we’re inheriting from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients, Biden’s Covid-19 coordinator, told reporters Wednesday night. “We don’t have the visibility that we would hope to have into supply and allocations.”
Biden officials complained during the transition that their efforts to gather information on the coronavirus response were stymied at times by Trump administration political appointees. Biden aides for weeks were unable to access Tiberius, the central government database used to monitor vaccine distributions, according to one transition official. They were also denied access to certain standing meetings related to the government’s response until a few days before Biden was sworn in.
Yet while few disputed the transition was rocky, officials working on the transition or familiar with its work said it was patently obvious that the Trump administration response was severely lacking, and it should have been no surprise to Biden’s team.
That is particularly the case with the vaccine pipeline, which has been at the center of weeks of finger-pointing between states and the federal government over the slow pace of vaccinations.”
“Biden is releasing a national plan. It’s a broad outline, but the general idea is that the federal government should take a more hands-on strategy: providing reliable guidance to the public; proactively supplying states with the resources they need to test, contact trace, and vaccinate; taking a stronger global role on pandemic response; and emphasizing equity in all aspects of the administration’s work.
At the top of the agenda is the overarching goal: 100 million vaccine shots in 100 days. Some experts argue that goal doesn’t go far enough, but the Biden administration says it’s faster than the current vaccination rate and only the start of a process that will span months.
Biden’s team repeatedly acknowledged to reporters that they’ll need Congress’s support to get all of this done, including meeting the administration’s vaccination goal. But Biden is trying to get the ball rolling with a suite of executive actions that, in the administration’s view, chip away at some of the current gaps in the federal response.”
“In the U.S., a botched and politicized COVID-19 vaccine distribution process seems to be fueling a black market in vaccines.
Anyone with knowledge of their fellow humans could have seen this coming. Limited supplies and controlled distribution of a product in high demand incentivize people to jump the line, or to make money by offering to help others do so.
“There absolutely will be a black market,” New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan commented at the beginning of December. “Anything that’s seen as lifesaving, life-preserving, and that’s in short supply creates black markets.””
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“In the end, federal promises of 20 million vaccinations administered by the end of the year were off by a lot, with the actual number just over 2 million.”
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“Cochrane believes governments should have got out of the way of companies that could have sold people what they need to deal with the pandemic, including vaccines. “The government could buy too,” he offers, but “allowing the vaccine to go to the highest bidders—and allowing people to get it at CVS or administer it themselves—would have rolled vaccines out much faster.””
“Netanyahu declared that Israel will be a “global model state for the rapid vaccination of an entire country.” But how much Israel’s success can be replicated abroad is hard to say. Israel’s small and densely packed population has eased some of the logistical and operational challenges of delivering the vaccine. And Israel’s universal health care system, which has easily accessible records for all citizens, has massively facilitated the program.”
“States scrambling to deploy millions of coronavirus vaccines are resorting to drastic measures as they wait for federal aid to help speed mass inoculations.
With about 4.8 million of the approximately 17 million doses shipped out by the federal government administered, state leaders like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are threatening steep fines for health providers that don’t use up all their shots this week; others are calling on retired health care workers, dentists and even veterinarians to staff vaccination sites. And many are reworking their carefully crafted distribution plans on the fly to get older Americans the shots sooner amid spiking infection rates and news that a more transmissible strain of the virus has reached the U.S.
The patchwork of responses comes as desperate governors are facing a vacuum of federal support, along with dire funding and workforce shortages that are hampering the pace of the rollout. Though Trump administration officials predict vaccination rates will pick up this week, the White House’s coronavirus task force has not convened a call with governors since Dec. 21. States have not yet seen the nearly $9 billion Congress approved to help vaccine distribution in a late December relief package.
“What we need from the federal government is for them to have started vaccine distribution planning much earlier in the year last year,” said Casey Katims, a federal liaison for Washington state.
Trump administration officials have repeatedly said that getting shots into arms is states’ responsibility. But it’s not clear whether states’ emergency measures will be enough to get the most ambitious inoculation campaign in U.S. history back on track. And the mishmash of state approaches is creating growing disparities around the country in who can get the vaccine. Some pharmacists have started offering leftover doses of the coveted vaccine to the general public before they spoil. In other parts of the country, people at high risk — including frontline workers — are still waiting for their shots.
“The distribution is moving slower than people had hoped,” said Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid-19 czar. “We are not satisfied because we want to get vaccines in every West Virginian’s arm, but this is a massively complicated process.”
Officials with Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine accelerator, have said that holidays, snowstorms and a significant reporting lag contributed to the smaller-than-expected vaccination numbers in December. More than 2.6 million people were inoculated out of the 20 million the federal government had repeatedly promised.
Administration officials rejected the notion that they have not given states adequate support. Federal officials talk to states multiple times a week and monitor statewide data to “learn how we can better assist future efforts,” a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said. And Vice President Mike Pence’s office said that the White House coronavirus task force is planning a call with governors for later this week or early next after not convening over the holidays.”
“Despite Covid-19 surges in Europe, the United States of America’s extraordinary death toll remains among the worst in the developed world.
As of January 9, 2021, nearly 373,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US, with a death rate of more than 1.1 per 1,000 people, according to Our World in Data.
While there are nations with higher death rates, this still puts the US in the top 20 percent for deaths among the world’s developed countries, with more than twice the death rate of the median developed country.”
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“As a result of Covid-19 surges in Europe, the US does look relatively better, compared to other developed nations, than in September. Back then, the US had seven times the death toll as the median developed country. That gap has shrunk massively — to two times.
That’s not because the US has done better but because Europe has done much worse. After managing to largely suppress the coronavirus over the spring and summer of 2020, Europe eased up over the late summer and fall, and saw huge surges as a result.”
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“there are some countries that have managed the pandemic well. That includes some European nations like Denmark, Estonia, Cyprus, Finland, Norway, and Iceland. But the biggest success stories are Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan — which have broadly adopted more aggressive government measures against the coronavirus than America.”
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“So why did the US fail so badly? A lot of this comes down to President Donald Trump. He pushed the country to reopen far too early and quickly, calling on states to “LIBERATE” their economies. He abdicated federal leadership and instead forced states, cities, and private entities to pick up the slack on a host of issues, particularly testing and, recently, vaccines. He downplayed the need for masks, outright mocking people, such as President-elect Joe Biden, for wearing them. The list goes on and on.
In comparison, other leaders around the world have taken Covid-19 more seriously — embracing social distancing, testing and tracing, masking, and, when necessary, more extreme measures like lockdowns. Even with the recent surge of the coronavirus, many countries across Europe have reacted quickly and aggressively by imposing lockdowns, slowing the spread of the virus. The US, by comparison, has by and large remained open, with some states still not requiring masks.
Clearly, not everything has gone perfectly in Europe and other parts of the world. A lot of people and places have screwed up their response to the coronavirus, showing that it’s no easy challenge.
But when the numbers are added up, the US remains an extraordinary failure in its handling of Covid-19.”
“At the beginning of the pandemic, there were understandably few tests available for detecting coronavirus infections. But the federal government made the situation much worse by screwing up the development and deployment of testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention botched its own COVID-19 test while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blocked the development of alternatives by private companies and universities. Months later, the United States still does not have enough tests.
The good news is that the FDA has since approved more than a couple hundred COVID-19 tests. But these tests are not available on the scale needed to stem the tide of infections by enabling Americans to test themselves, warn friends and family if they test positive, and then voluntarily isolate themselves to prevent the further transmission of the disease.”
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“Operation Warp Speed was successful at scaling up vaccine production in part because the federal government issued around $18 billion in contracts to their makers. Had the government similarly prioritized COVID-19 testing, the country would not now be piddling around with just 1.5 million tests per day. The Trump administration contracted in late August with Abbott Laboratories to purchase 150 million of its point-of-care BinaxNOW COVID-19 tests for $750 million. The tests, which take about 15 minutes to provide a result, began shipping to state public health agencies at the end of September.
That’s a start, but much more testing needs to be done. Instead of using tests primarily to diagnose COVID-19 cases, they should be used as part of disease surveillance approach in which every American can test themselves frequently.”
“whichever rules the Biden administration might impose, if they reduce worker density at meat plants that are already operating at capacity, then there simply won’t be room—or jobs—for all of the workers that currently staff these plants.
That’s because meatpacking plants are designed to maximize output while complying with existing rules. Changing the rules means changing the plants. That’s not easy.”