Now that the Biden administration is at the helm, they can finally right the ship and start making progress against the coronavirus pandemic, but that's apparently going to be an even taller task than we know.
Administration sources who spoke to CNN say that in the weeks before and immediately after Biden's inauguration, it became clear that they wouldn't be fixing the Trump regime's plans as much as they would be developing a plan for distributing vaccines for the first time ever.
But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration's Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.
"There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," one source said.
Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from "square one" because there simply was no plan as: "Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence."
You might say this is not necessarily news.
The Trump regime never developed a unified plan for slowing the initial spread of the virus nearly a year ago and their nonexistent vaccine distribution plan was more of the same. States were allocated a share of vaccines and told to develop their own plans for distribution. Every man for himself.
But even that part of the regime's non-plan was flawed according to additional reporting from the Daily Beast. Sources gave the Daily Beast a look under the hood of vaccine distribution and this explains why states have been left guessing how many doses they will receive.
Developed by the military, the plan was to have the federal government, specifically the military officials within Operation Warp Speed, lead the logistics part of the vaccine delivery. The military would not actually touch the vaccine but would instead coordinate the effort from the Pentagon.
Part of that coordination required states using the Pentagon’s Tiberius system—a platform that allows local officials to input their orders and see when they will be receiving their next doses. States only had a few weeks to try out the Tiberius platform before the vaccine rollout began in December, officials said, and they were provided false projections on how many doses they would be receiving once the Pfizer vaccine became available.
Two state health officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said they believe the Tiberius system is still not accurately updating and is miscounting either how many doses the companies have manufactured or how many have been allocated by the federal government.
Operation Warp Speed and the rest of the Trump White House was providing false statements about vaccine availability to the public, but they were also providing fake numbers to state governments in private.
A record high 4,400 people died from coronavirus complications yesterday and another 100,000 are going to follow them over the next month. A significant share if not most of those deaths are a result of Trump regime incompetence.
The Biden administration can start doing things right today, but death is a lagging indicator and the deaths we're going to see in the coming weeks are already baked in by recent infections.