I don’t see how the attack can be misguided when basically Biden himself admits he is frustrated they dont have a plan yet in the Politico article above.
As for the rest of your post I agree with it. Distribution should be doable with a competent plan from an administration who cares. The Biden admin definitely cares. But distribution is the first problem to solve. You can manufacture all the vaccine in the world and it won’t matter if you can’t effectively distribute it. As of today we have a shockingly small percentage of vaccine produced a month ago in arms so distribution obviously is a problem.
In SoCal both Dodger Stadium and Disneyland are going to be used as vaccination sites. They say they’re aiming for 12K a day at Dodger Stadium. I think there need to be two simultaneous efforts, one to vaccinate the most vulnerable and one to just get as many shots in as many arms as possible. Of course for that to be doable they need a shit-ton more vaccines, which hopefully will be aided by the DPA.
Some of the bottleneck might be in the consent forms, gathering data to ensure a second shot, and waiting 15-30 minutes to watch for side effects, all while practicing appropriate social distancing.
Biggest problem imo is that like half of the chuds in America won’t get vaccinated because of dumb shit they read on Facebook. Not much anyone at the local or federal level can do about that.
My wife’s company just had a meeting with Bidens’s vaccine team about using urgent care centers to administer vaccines, it didn’t seem to go well. Most urgent care leaders don’t want to bother doing it because they won’t make any money, they are asking the feds to give them a bunch of cash.
My understanding is that everybody will stay in their cars as they did with the mass testing sites. That’s why dodger stadium and Disneyland are good options, their parking lots are enormous.
Just short of 1,000 doses of vaccine suddenly arrived in Albania at the start of the week - providing a public (and literal) shot in the arm for Prime Minister Edi Rama.
He has been under fire for Albania’s failure to start an inoculation programme - and faces an election in April.
While the premier was happy to come on the receiving end of this particular jab, he was less than forthcoming about its source.
He would only reveal that it was the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine - and that it had been a gift from a European Union country.
This prompted opposition parties to accuse him of a lack of transparency.
But Mr Rama has been keeping schtum - while media outlets scramble for clues.
Germany became the prime suspect after eagle-eyed reporters spotted the vaccine was produced and exported from there.
But the German embassy in Tirana said it had “no information” about any donation.
Mr Rama has also ruled out neighbouring Greece as the mystery donor.
Tirana-based journalist Fatjona Medjini says identifying the source has become a popular guessing game.
“Austria has already been very friendly and helpful; Italy too,” she says, but adds: “You can’t speculate."
That’s not prevented many people from trying to do just that.
On Monday my wife and I went to a vaccination event. About two weeks ago I registered with the vaccine system that the NM department of health set up. In order to register you had to enter your medical history, insurance info, etc. It took me about 10 minutes to complete my profile.
On Saturday I received a text from the state with an event code for this Monday, which was to be used on a first come first serve basis to get the vaccine. Both my wife and I registered right away and received texts with information and reminders up to the day of the event. The day of vaccination we had to fill out a short questionnaire related to allergies.
The vaccination site was at a large event center where the State Fair is held. I think they are doing testing at that site in the mornings and vaccinations in the afternoons. We arrived at 12:40pm for our 1pm appointment and there were already ~100 cars in line and lots more coming in every minute. At about 5 minutes to 1pm (the first appointment time), the cars started moving quickly. By about 1:15 or so we were directed to a parking lot.
We got out of our car and walked to the auditorium which has a capacity of 11,000. There were probably 200-300 people inside. Everyone lined up at least 6ft apart. There were about 10 stations dispensing the vaccine. You’d get in line, a person will ask you your DOB, find your registration, ask you which arm you wanted the vaccine on, then you sat on a chair, get your shot, and move into a designated waiting area on the bleachers. There were two sections, one for people without allergies, where you only had to wait 15 minutes, and one for people with history of allergies, where you had to wait 30 minutes.
As soon as I sat down I received a text confirming the date and time of the second shot appointment. Once the 15 minutes were up, I received another text saying I could now leave.
One hour and 5 minutes is all it took, and it felt completely safe and extremely well organized.
Trump officials initially blocked the Biden team’s access to Tiberius, the database the government uses to monitor vaccine distribution, and the team has only just begun using it: “As we learn more and gain visibility, the calculus changes,” the transition source says.
Tiberius was a very flawed emperor. Basically checked out of Rome and governing in the last 20 years of his reign. Many people are saying he was a pederast but historians frequently hung bad behavior on their biography targets back in the day. In any event, terrible name for a government database.