President Biden released his COVID war plan on Thursday, promising that “aid is on the way.” Unfortunately, it is far from clear that the strategy will rise to the challenge.
The 198-page plan promises “to do everything in its power to ensure that Americans can be vaccinated quickly, effectively and fairly.” Washington will encourage manufacturers to boost vaccine production, through the Defense Production Act, and focus on “supply shortages.” The new prez signed several executive commands to launch the program.
That’s all great, but Biden’s goal of 100 million vaccines in 100 days, or 1 million a day, as Betsy McCaughey pointed out Thursday, won’t create herd immunity by July. For that, the nation must at least vaccinate 1.8 million people daily. And even reaching 1 million a day is far from certain.
When a reporter pointed out that 1 million is only 10 percent higher than the current number of daily doses, Biden started with his typical “Give me a break, man.” Is the media honeymoon over yet? One can only hope.
The plan also gives high priority to ensuring “equality, including between racial, ethnic and rural / urban boundaries”. How about making sure everyone gets vaxxed?
Shots intended for higher priority recipients should not be lost if those people are not available, but instead should go to everyone. That’s the practice in Israel, where nearly a quarter of the population has had at least one dose – compared to only about 4 percent of Americans.
It’s also not a good sign that Biden’s aides are already rolling out apologies and blaming President Donald Trump’s people: “What we inherit is so much worse than we could have imagined,” lamented Jeff Zients, the new COVID. Coordinator of the White House.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned again on Thursday of “a major shortage” of the vaccine in the city. “We continue to cancel appointments instead of booking more appointments,” he said.
And while claiming that the city’s vaccination program “shoots all cylinders,” a column by Allan Ripp in Thursday’s Post painted a truly nightmarish picture of what it’s really like to be bumped here.
Yes, getting the vaccine into people’s arms fast is a huge challenge. But countries like Israel have done it. With 4,000 Americans dying daily, leaders like Biden, de Blasio, and Governor Andrew Cuomo must act quickly – and rise to that challenge.