While expressing gratitude to the scientists, researchers and people who participated in clinical trials, Biden said, "The vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure."
Now that didn't exactly seem like appropriate language to get President Trump's Operation Warp Speed team to work with then President Elect Joe Biden's coronavirus transition team. Why would Joe Biden make that type of statement? I think it was an attempt to lower expectations, similar to his low ball pledge of getting 100 million vaccine doses in 100 days target. That pledge was already a realistic target as during the final days of Trump's administration the US was trending close to 1 million doses per day.
A question to ask is: was President Trump's rollout plan really a dismal failure?
Bloomberg (Jan 28) reports that the Biden team is only making modest changes to the plan.
President Joe Biden and his top advisers have derided the Trump administration’s playbook for distributing coronavirus vaccines, but so far have made only modest changes to the plan that’s meeting their target pace of more than one million shots a day.
. . . But while Biden’s approach to the virus -- frank warnings about the pandemic, mask mandates on federal property -- is a reversal from Trump’s policies, his administration’s distribution of vaccines so far looks little different from that of its predecessor. Before Biden was sworn in, vaccines already were being delivered at a pace to meet his goal of 100 million doses in his first 100 days as president.
The article mentions a few other changes such as federally run vaccination centers and racial equity. The problem with the racial equity strategy is that it doesn't always deliver the results you thought possible as can be read in this LA Times (Jan 23) article that discusses stand by lines in South LA and the resulting demographics of that line.
Of course, as seems to be rather common place, the argument for why President Biden isn't able to diverge from the Operation Warp Speed plan is due to President Trump disputing the election results.
Any efforts by Biden to shape the program also were undercut by Trump, who delayed the transition as he disputed the results of the election and refused to concede. Trump’s team said more than 300 transition briefings were held with health officials, though Biden officials have said the information exchange was limited until just days before the inauguration.
Since the article is taking a negative view of President Biden's statement of "dismal failure," I think one should discuss the political leanings of Bloomberg. Remember that Mike Bloomberg (owner of Bloomberg) was briefly in the Democratic primaries and also spent heavily in support of Biden. One should take this as a telling article.
The article also discusses President Biden exercising the option to get an additional 100 million doses from both Pfizer and Moderna. Both won't be delivered until the summer. If any other vaccines are approved such as Johnson & Johnson's or AstraZeneca's, the United States might have too many doses in inventory. When asked about the potential of having too many doses in inventory, President Biden responded:
. . . “I hope you’re all asking me by the end of the summer that: You have too much vaccine left over. You have too much equipment left over. That’s not my worry,” he said this week. “I hope that becomes the problem”
Since the article is taking a negative view of President Biden's statement of "dismal failure," I think one should discuss the political leanings of Bloomberg. Remember that Mike Bloomberg (owner of Bloomberg) was briefly in the Democratic primaries and also spent heavily in support of Biden. One should take this as a telling article.
The article also discusses President Biden exercising the option to get an additional 100 million doses from both Pfizer and Moderna. Both won't be delivered until the summer. If any other vaccines are approved such as Johnson & Johnson's or AstraZeneca's, the United States might have too many doses in inventory. When asked about the potential of having too many doses in inventory, President Biden responded:
. . . “I hope you’re all asking me by the end of the summer that: You have too much vaccine left over. You have too much equipment left over. That’s not my worry,” he said this week. “I hope that becomes the problem”
Yet, being greedy should be discussed. As mentioned in this blog post, the WHO is concerned about vaccine selfishness. We have to remember that Moderna and Pfizer vaccines only have a 6 month shelf life so any friction between shifting these vaccines to other nations just takes away valuable time to use those doses. Was the Trump administration potentially being more empathetic towards other nations?
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