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The incredible COVID-19 vaccine was the lone bright spot in our response to the pandemic. Even that became deplorably tarnished as well—until recently.
The COVID vaccine rollout was botched by the previous White House administration. Many felt that was predictable since a federal-state coordinated partnership to get these life-saving vaccines into the arms of people was never established.
The federal government’s approach was to distribute the vaccines to the states, and it was up to them to take it from there. Unfortunately, there was a lack of federal funding, and the vaccine allocations were distributed to states weekly on short notice—inconsistently, unevenly and unpredictably. And with a lack of public health infrastructure, the huge undertaking proved to be overwhelming for many states to effectively handle.
Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told the American public that all vaccines held in reserve for second doses would be immediately released. The next day, he announced there were, in fact, no vaccines held in reserve. Nothing more than a reflection of the administration’s negligence, incompetence and chaos.
Of the tens of millions of doses distributed to states, only about half have been administered; the original timetable is greatly behind schedule. Where are all these vaccines? No one seems to know. If they have been distributed, they must be sitting in freezers in states lacking the capacity and organization to administer them.
Some states, like Indiana, have efficiently used nearly all the vaccines that have been given to them. There is some unused vaccine-administration capacity in Indiana, and further expansion is limited only by the number of vaccines allocated to us. Other states have run out and have canceled thousands of immunization appointments.
Let’s get this right. Projections are that some 500,000 people will have died of COVID-19 by the end of this month. Over 3,000 Americans die each day. Worse, there are now multiple new, more transmissible and possibly more deadly variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And the more the virus spreads, the more it will mutate, rendering immunization less effective.
Vaccination is our only way out of this crisis, and it needs to seriously intensify. It’s up to President Biden to get it done.
Biden has assembled a COVID-19 response team and has proposed a $20 billion national vaccination program. The president has launched a much more engaged and supportive federal governmental role in leading and coordinating the immunization effort. His official goal is 100 million doses administered in his first 100 days in office, but he said late last month that 150 million doses in that time frame is possible.
The Biden plan includes establishing mass immunization sites supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the National Guard; partnerships with pharmacies for vaccine administration; and mobile vaccine clinics for hard-to-reach areas and underserved populations. Allocations to states will expand with more advance notice of shipment quantities, which is essential for planning. The Defense Production Act is being used to expand vaccine-related supplies.
Two hundred million more doses have been ordered, and the president’s new pledge is to fully vaccinate 300 million Americans by fall. Importantly, Biden will initiate a massive public education initiative to increase acceptance of and confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine.
A good plan urgently needed. What had become tarnished now shines again.
Only about 40 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered. It will take 500 million doses given to achieve herd immunity (75% of the population receiving two doses). We have a long way to go with little time. Now, we will get there.•
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Feldman is a family physician, author, lecturer and former Indiana State Department of Health commissioner for Gov. Frank O’Bannon. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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Very tiresome response from Dr. Feldman of Trump = bad, Biden = good without giving any of his word count on explaining how the previous administration had “botched” the vaccine rollout but I’m sure he’ll circle back with us!
This makes me want to cancel my subscription reading this garabage
AMEN to the above commenters: Does Dr. Feldman even think we would have vaccines to discuss if Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden had been President since the first of the year? Hardly.
Hey Dr. Feldman….Trump helped stimulate and encourage the discovery of the vaccine in short time, helped get it produced and distributed and now you want to say he failed? All Biden has to do is pick up when Trump left off; he’s got it easy! Please get off your liberal high horse; it gets old!
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Richard,
It sounds like not everyone agrees with you about vaccines. I think that if Trump hadn’t been involved we would still not have a vaccine. Biden is certainly tasked with seeing to the administration of the vaccine, but he has known since November that this needed his attention. Instead of signing a record number of executive orders designed to undo everything Trump, it seems as though Biden or members of his team, should have been focusing on administering vaccines, getting children back in school, and getting the economy moving towards recovery.
Robert you hit the nail on the head well said.
Trump left it to the states to plan, oops, I guess the local level can’t plan. (See letter from corporate leaders saying locals do a better job) Oh and drug companies are geared up to produce more all the time going forward, Dr. Quack
Really? “Even that became deplorably tarnished as well–until recently” I should known better and stopped reading your opinion after that literary gem.
Let me just echo Dr Feldman’s sentiments. To be clear, the ONLY thing that Trump did was to cut through the “red tape” of protocol and the vaccines were made available on a “provisional” basis. Pfizer, the first vaccine to become available, received no government funds. They did it because they could. Yes, Trump botched the pandemic response. He reported in taped interviews with Bob Woodward, that he was aware of the seriousness of the pandemic. This was in February. Operation “Warp Speed” didn’t start until May 15…90 days later! And it wasn’t Trump’s idea. It was Alex Azar and members of the Joint Chiefs who had huddled up and made the recommendation to the White House to back the proposal. Certainly credit them with getting that done and getting the vaccine established. If Trump had treated it seriously, we would have started it 90 days earlier when he knew (but didn’t disclose) his awareness of the seriousness of the situation. Then, his claim was grandiose (typical Trump) that fell short. Vaccine production and distribution was lacking, pushing the problems down to the states. Typical Trump. To answer someone’s objection to Dr. Feldman’s concern about there needing to be a strong federal coordination couldn’t be more well stated. And so, nearly 500,000 good Americans have perished and the number could have been much smaller if Trump had taken science seriously and supported mask wearing and other measures designed to slow the spread. But no, he was too macho for that, so he blew that off whenever he could and the rest is history. Everyone stating support for Trump and disdain for Dr. Feldman’s point of view lack both the experience or knowledge to make their complaints. The facts are what the facts are and, unfortunately, instead of welcoming a strong federal response that may save their lives or those of their family members or friends, they want to make it more of a political issue, which simply continues the mind-blowing negligence of the Trump Administration. Welcome to Indiana, where too many people aren’t willing to accept facts and will hang their hat on a failed Trump Administration pandemic response. And, oh….yes, Obama, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Bush II ALL would have done better……that I guarantee. They would have put their egos aside in favor of doing what was right and saving lives.
While Pfizer received no funding the government pretty much guaranteed it with the purchase agreement. I’m sorry but no one knew how this was going to play out in February (maybe if China was so close lipped) maybe we could have pivoted to a better response. Hopefully the world community will hold China accountable for these global pandemics in the future and sanction them if they can’t get their wet markets and other issues under control. Furthermore, the heavy handed restrictions at the beginning (15 days to flatten the curve remember?) wore Americans out and pissed many more off so that when cases really skyrocketed in early November Americans were fatigued. Nothing was going to stop the holiday bump people want to spend time with their families. More American deaths lie on the shoulders of state governors’ decisions (Pennsylvania and New York off the top of my head) than Trump. But I lack the experience and knowledge to form an opinion, but I know the answer is more federal government in my life.
To end, I’m still not sure how a strong federal coordination would’ve really changed things or how what Biden is doing any different since we began receiving the first vaccine shipments… “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” – Joe Biden January 22, 2021