Meanwhile, Operation Warp Speed is chugging along at about 1/10th impulse power:
The largest immunization campaign in U.S. history is off to a slow start, dimming hopes, at the end of a dismal year, of an imminent return to normal.
In some places, the vaccination campaign — among the most complex logistical efforts undertaken in peacetime — has been marked by chaos and confusion. Many medical workers who believe they should have priority access are finding that inoculation remains elusive. And most states moved into the third week of immunization not yet beginning to get shots to long-term care facilities, which have been epicenters of infection.
The result is the delayed administration of vaccines during the deadliest month of the pandemic so far. As of Wednesday, 12.4 million doses had been distributed nationally, while 2.6 million had been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why anyone would have expected that the vaccination campaign would not be as shambolic as the rest of Trump's response to the pandemic is proof of the triumph of hope over reality.
Fergus is trying to blame the states for the slow rollout of the vaccine, and ignoring the goddamn Republicans' opposition to financial aid to states, which can't legally run deficits, in the face of state and local tax revenue that has been buggered by the covid economic downturn.
ReplyDeleteThat shit costs money, and some of that money is in the bill he just signed, but waited a week to do so.
If they would have passed the fucking HEROES act last May, the money would have been there, but they sat around with their thumbs up their butts until the very last instant to do an inadequate bill that hasn't even had it's authorized resources rolled out yet, and then whined that the goddamn states weren't doing their jobs for them fast enough.
Republicans really suck.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
It was so at the volcano but perhaps a better example is a wildfire, a big one. What most folks would think of as a forest fire, burns the forest up. Or down, as it may, or may not, be. A good fire burns down ... the understory, the underbrush, the weed trees, rarely reaches up into the canopy. Which is the real deal and beside my point. For several weeks, often months - the volcano was a couple years - after a big fire there's nothing around, all the wildlife has been run off, at best, and all there is is silence. The noise you make. Kinda' eerie, primordial even.
ReplyDeleteI'm not big on the predicting game, but I got this eerie, primordial tightness down around where I'd rather not that about a month into the new year, three weeks into January it's gonna' get that quiet. Not unlike that minute or two after a bomb goes off.
Maybe then (maybe not, as it may, or may not, be) it will sink in, people will get it.
I'm not banking on it.
The State of Texas says I can get vaccinated, if the local jabber has stabbed all the local healthcare workers, so call and ask. The local needle shop says please don’t call as it slows our vaccination campaign. The State website shows which needle shops got vaccines, but not which are offering vaccines to those in category 1B. The local joints don’t have details anywhere about how to determine if you can schedule a shot...
ReplyDeleteThis roll out is a complete mess. On a related note, one moron manager caused yesterday’s aviation Gordian knot.