The COVID vaccines that have been approved for use—and the promising candidates in the pipeline—have been a light of hope in this dark pandemic winter. Dimming that optimism, though, is the fact that the rollout of those vaccines has been as maddeningly inept, disorganized, and ineffective as the rest of the nation’s coronavirus response.
The United States had aimed to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020; it missed its target by more than 17 million. Donald Trump, taking a victory lap on the vaccine success last month at a White House summit, promised shots would be “distributed very quickly,” that “every American who wants the vaccine will be able to get the vaccine” in short order; vaccines have instead sat on warehouse shelves amid a lack of direction from his government, some are likely to expire before they can be injected into Americans’ arms, and states—left on their own as the president ignores the crisis entirely—have been beset by confusion. Vaccines will soon help the country start returning to a pre-pandemic normalcy—but shoddy rollout could stretch the meaning of the word “soon,” and at great cost, with cases and deaths surging and hospital systems reaching their breaking point.
“The rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines is a tribute to the NIH, the FDA and to the professionals in the pharmaceutical industry,” Senator Mitt Romney said in a scathing criticism of the rollout last week. “But unlike the development of the vaccines, the vaccination process itself is falling behind…That comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”
Incomprehensible indeed. The Trump administration long ago gave up on measures to mitigate the spread of the virus, pinning all its hopes of emerging from this crisis on scientists developing a vaccine in record time. That those wildly effective vaccines did arrive in less than a year, and the federal government was caught flat-footed by the very miracle it had been banking on, is stupefying. In fairness, the vaccination process was always going to be a logistical headache. But Operation Warp Speed has been far from up to the challenge so far, as even its chief, Moncef Slaoui, acknowledged over the weekend. “We need to improve,” he said on CBS News Face the Nation Sunday.
As was the case with medical supplies, COVID tests, and plans to combat the pandemic during its first year, the lack of federal leadership has put the burden on individual states. That’s led to chaos and confusion, as well as absurdities. Trump has seized on state and municipal miscues to shirk blame for the mess. “The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states,” he tweeted last week. “Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!” It’s true that local distribution efforts could and should be better. But it’s also true that his government has been slow in distributing doses to states, and he and his administration have failed to provide sufficient leadership to the struggling states. The result has been a rollout that, if continued on its current pace, could take a decade to vaccinate enough Americans to achieve herd immunity—not months.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has predicted in recent days that vaccinations will soon rebound from the slow start, and remains bullish on enough Americans receiving their pokes in the coming months that normalcy of some kind will return by next fall. The promise of a more competent, humane administration taking over in just over two weeks gives some additional hope of an improved rollout. For now, though, the fact remains that the coronavirus is ravaging the country like never before—as CNN reported Tuesday, one American is now succumbing to COVID every 33 seconds—and things could get worse in the wake of the holiday season and as pandemic fatigue and a new, seemingly more infectious mutation of the virus spread. Any hiccups in the rollout will mean more lives lost. “This is going to be the greatest operational challenge we’ve ever faced as a nation,” Joe Biden said last week, criticizing the administration’s bungled vaccination push. “We’re going to get it done. But it’s going to take a vast new effort that’s not yet underway.”
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