And while I do not share the sentiment, I can certainly understand why people think it has been overplayed for political purposes. When people who claim to take it seriously act otherwise, it breeds deserved distrust.
Exhibit A: virus-ravaged New York's vaccination rates are low, especially on weekends:
For now, the vaccination effort does not resemble the sort of mass mobilization many imagined. New York City has yet to open any large vaccination sites. Instead, hospitals administered many of the first vaccinations to their employees. Hospitals have been encouraged to use each shipment of vaccines within a week, and the operation does not always have a race-against-the-clock feel.
The number of vaccinations plummets on weekends and all but stopped for Christmas Day, when more planes landed at Kennedy International Airport than vaccine doses were administered in New York City.
The vaccination program is now in its third week and has yet to accelerate dramatically, even as supply has begun to increase. More than 340,000 doses have been delivered to New York City so far.
Exhibit B: a Congresswoman who tested positive for the virus on December 28 was present for the vote for Speaker of the House yesterday--which blatantly violates the CDC guidance for infected persons.
[By the way, if you get hung up on the moniker for corona in the first link of Exhibit B, keep that and other irrelevant thoughts to yourself.]
They need to get the vaccine in people's arms before the British variant arrives. Britain is in crisis right now. At the rate they've been going, it will take a year for the vulnerable population to get their first dose.
ReplyDeleteThey do. Hand it over to the pharmacy chains just like with the flu shots. I recognize that that will require some additional storage equipment, but Walgreens did a bang-up job with my flu shot this year.
ReplyDeleteAnything other than what we are doing now would be nice.
And the really bad news is that they think the British variant is already here.
Heard from a friend:
ReplyDelete"Just have chik-fil-a distribute the vaccine and we'll have the nation inoculated in 48 hrs."
Did you catch that the Virginia state government is giving priority to 'essential workers' (i.e. a quarter of the population) over the old, even though essential workers qua essential workers are not at risk? They haven't gotten to the 'essential workers' because they're still working on the nursing homes and health care workers. Note, about 3% of the population consists of nursing home patients and hands on medical sector employees. We're they vaccinating at the rate flu vaccines were distributed in 2018, they could vaccinate all the nursing home residents and medical-sector workers in about three weeks. It's been three weeks and they've gotten the 1st dose to about 40% of the target population.
ReplyDeleteAbout 30% of California's hospital beds are now occupied by COVID patients. There's still no sign of the apex (though the rate of increase has tapered off some). Most of the heartland states peaked before they reached 30% saturation. And California's still dawdling over vaccine distribution. They've authorized dentists to administer the vaccine. We've got 2,000,000 RNs in this country and they're idea of expanded delivery is recruiting 200,000 dentists.
ReplyDeleteAnd an update. West Virginia is vaccinating 12,000 people a day, and giving priority to the elderly. Virginia, with nearly 5x the population, is vaccinating 5,500 people a day (on average, they shut down on Sunday), and giving priority to a nebulous category of 'essential workers' (most of whom are not vulnerable and in no danger of giving it to patients).
ReplyDeleteDid you catch how Gov. Northam put 400,000 people in NoVa under curfew for 12 hours on account of a disturbance in the Capitol building miles away, a disturbance already over. Those are the Governor's priorities.