Coronavirus: Is President Joe' Biden's 100 million Vaccine Doses in 100 Days Goal that Impressive?

When then President-elect Joe Biden announced that he was targeting 100 million COVID-19 vaccination doses in the first 100 days, the media seemed to fawn at how aggressive of a goal it was. 

Take this USA Today (Jan 14) article: 

President-elect Joe Biden wants Americans to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots during the first 100 days of his administration, a lofty goal to reverse a slow start to the nation's vaccine rollout.

Biden offered few details on how his administration would achieve the ambitious timeline during a Thursday night speech on his proposed $1.9 trillion economic recovery package. He plans to share more details Friday on his vaccine plan.

"This will be one of the most challenging operational efforts we’ve ever undertaken as a nation," Biden said. "We’ll have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated, to create more places for them to get vaccinated, to mobilize more medical teams to get shots in peoples’ arms."

"Lofty?" Really? "Ambitious?" Seriously? Will it actually take him to "move heaven and earth" to get to 100 million vaccination doses within his first 100 days?

Yes, President Trump's goal of 20 million doses by Dec 31st was missed by a far mark. We haven't even reached that goal by the end of his term. That goal was either aspiration or a total failed operation. But Joe Biden's target feels like the L.A. Lakers wanting to make the playoffs by winning just half their games.

Let's look at Our World In Data information. Per that site, we've already gotten around 1 million shots per day a couple of times.

Jan 15: 1.13 million

Jan 13: 0.951 million 

From Jan 16 thru 19, there was an average of 0.858 million per 4 days. Since there is a long MLK weekend in that timeframe, I suspect that at least one of those days came close if not above 1 million.

Starting around January 5th, there appears to be a significant ramp up in doses.

Since there are some 15 million doses that have already been given (most are just first doses), it seems that getting say 12 million of those 100 million doses are a done deal.

To get the remaining, all Joe Biden's administration would need to do is basically keep daily doses at current levels. 

The only way I see this goal as anywhere near "lofty, ambitious, needing to move heaven and earth" is if we have a serious supply problem or a lack of demand. Now if there is some unseen adverse effect that suddenly pops up related to one or more of the vaccines, well, the goal isn't going to be hit no matter what. However, if we stick with the current trendlines, this target isn't a stretch at all.