Biden officials on Sunday affirmed that although the President’s goal of 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations in his first 100 days in office is a challenge in itself after former President Trump left the country with no real vaccine distribution plan, it is just the beginning of the new administration moving to pick up the pieces following the Trump administration’s failure to hit its own targets on distributing COVID-19 vaccines.
It’s good to see that the new administration has so many competent people that they can put out to tell the story simultaneously. But the 100 million doses goal seems like a distracting slogan. That would likely get only around 20% of the population to have completed 2 doses by the end of April. Not encouraging for anybody hoping for a more normal summer or fall. The real challenge seems to be how to get systems in place for dramatic further speed up as more doses become available in May-July.
It almost makes me think that, in the future, I should look to vote for people with experience in competent governance.
That would pretty much restrict me to the Democratic Party, wouldn’t it?
The Trump Administration did nothing on vaccinations. They set a goal of 20 million fully vaccinated by 12/31/20, and we’re not even at half that mark now as of 1/24/21 as the vast majority of the 21.1 million shots have been for the 1st dose, as it takes 3-4 weeks between shots before the second shot is administered.
Yet, the media are already raising the bar for the Biden Administration. They are smart to keep their target at 1 million vaccinations shots per day. We are expecting 2 more vaccines to come on line in early to mid Feb so that helps with the supply. What I’m really worried about, however, is the COVID variant. It’s ripping through Europe right now and even countries that have done a good job, like Denmark and Germany, are being overrun. The Trump legacy might include another surge of COVID infections that might be higher than the Nov-Dec surge. I’m hoping that’s not the case, and perhaps the surge we’re experiencing now is driven in part by the variant (we just didn’t know how early it was present in our country) and therefore the infection rate will remain steady and perhaps in slight decline giving us time to get the vaccination level up to par. But we’re behind the 8 ball now thanks to Trump.
In California, 4.9 mill doses of vaccine have been delivered and 2 mill doses have been administered. If you assume that most of those doses are first dose, that means up to 2 million more doses need to be reserved for 2nd shots to fully vaccinate the first 2 million people. That leaves, at worst, only about 900k to 1 mill shots left to vaccinate 500k-750k people in a state of 40 million. We are well behind in CA and the issue is supply not administration of shots. The COVID variant is already in CA and there are reports that LA may have had its own variant in circulation as early as 3-4 months ago. So, it’s a race against time in CA.
CA would need 1 mill doses a day for 36 days to be able to vaccinate 18 mill more people to add to the 2 to 2.5 mill that have been or are due to be fully vaccinated. That would cover half of CA’s population. So we do need to step up supply in a big way.
What makes you think it is the slogan, and/or that 100 million will remain the target? Please don’t play same game as the press, assuming stupidity in advance of any evidence of it.
In the meantime, let’s hit a consistent ever improving target and go from there. Biden inherited a nightmare and if he’s cautious about his estimates of how and when we might begin to see the end of that nightmare, I say all the better. Then he can overdeliver.
And pretty soon, when the weather warms up, it’s just gonna disappear.
So, go about your business like in any other year and don’t burden your face with a mask cause … reasons.
And, while we’re on the subject, how many of you’ve heard of hy - drox - ee – klor- oh - kwine?
