The United States has distributed far fewer doses of coronavirus vaccines than officials claimed they would by this point in time, but we appear to have a bigger problem on our hands.
Out of the limited number of doses distributed nationwide, a vast majority of them are still sitting in storage instead of being injected into someone. Over two-thirds of them according to Reuters.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines shipped within the United States have gone unused, U.S. health officials said on Monday, as the governors of New York and Florida vowed to penalize hospitals that fail to dispense shots quickly. [...]
Medical authorities have confronted widespread distrust of immunization safety, even among some healthcare workers, owing in part to the record speed with which COVID-19 vaccines were developed and approved 11 months after the virus emerged in the United States.
But some U.S. officials also have cited organizational glitches in launching the most ambitious mass inoculation campaign in the nation’s history in the year-end holiday season.
The "organizational glitch" is that there is no organization to speak of.
The Trump regime's handling of vaccine distribution mirrors that of the coronavirus itself. The Trump White House never took a leading position to slow the spread of the virus and eventually embraced the position that we should infect as many people as possible. The White House has also taken a hands-off approach to the vaccine and told all 50 states to develop their own plans.
You could say its the states' problem if they can't administer shots quickly enough, however each state is ultimately at the whim of the federal government which has decided how many vaccines each state will received. And, at the same time, Trump's government has not actually delivered what they promised to each state.
Some state governments say they won't even finish inoculating health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities until as late as March at the current rate. Vaccines will be available for people age 75 or older beyond that point and the rest of us will be waiting a much longer time.
Trump regime officials insisted that at least 40 million doses of a vaccine would be distributed by the end of 2020. We're approaching one month since distribution began so it's obviously a problem that only 15 million doses have been distributed. At this rate, it will take nearly 7 months to distribute 100 million doses and that's only enough to vaccinate 50 million out of 330 million Americans. And even if 100 million doses are distributed by June, how many of them will actually be injected into someone? Certainly not 50 million at the current rate.
I just hope I can go to a bar again before the summer is over. I hope all of these precarious timelines are improved by the Biden administration.