Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

America was always going to bungle the vaccine rollout

America was always going to bungle the vaccine rollout

Incompetence + misinformation + austerity + elaborate eligibility requirements = disaster
Vaccines are being shipped out across the country, but most of them have not yet made it into actual Americans. Bloomberg has been tracking vaccination progress across the country — at time of writing, about 12.5 million doses have been sent out, yet just over 3 million shots have actually been administered. At this rate, it will take something like seven years to inoculate the whole country, and many doses may expire before they can be used.

There was no way this wasn't going to be a disaster.

President Trump, of course, has completely failed to organize anything at the federal level. For all his manic shattering of political norms, his most characteristic behavior is simply not doing anything in a moment of crisis.

Since early November, over a thousand people a day have died of COVID, steadily increasing to nearly 4,000 on some recent days, but Trump has done virtually nothing except try to overturn the election with tweets, play golf, watch television, and pardon his criminal friends.

What federal action that is happening is being rigged up by the remaining shreds of the bureaucracy Trump has not yet destroyed. He says himself that states are on their own.

That of course is making things exponentially more difficult for those lower levels of government. The federal government has always played a central role in previous mass vaccination efforts, because it is the only entity that can coordinate the whole country. States and cities have already endured brutal austerity, laying off millions of employees and cutting back services. Now they are trying to organize a massive logistical operation during a murderous pandemic by the seat of their pants.

Trump's constant firehose of lies and misinformation have also done terrible damage. The Los Angeles Times reports that even many frontline health-care workers are hesitant about taking the vaccine, in part because they are skeptical of the political and economic motives behind the production of the vaccine. Clear and consistent communication is vital in pandemic control, so the population will trust that control measures will work. Instead Trump has undermined trust in everything.

That said, it is clear that many states and cities could be doing much better than they currently are. It has been obvious since January 2017 that the Trump administration would provide little help in a crisis. States and cities have had months to lay out a plan, and scrounge up the relative pittance needed to get shots into arms — cannibalizing every other department if necessary, for there can be nothing more important than getting that vaccine out.

Yet a great many states and cities are whiffing it. It appears that the culprit here is some combination of authorities getting tangled up over who deserves the vaccine the most, snarling the process with elaborate eligibility requirements (a classic American neurosis), and the blistering incompetence that has characterized nearly every level of the American state response to the pandemic. As Dr. Ashish K. Jha writes in the Washington Post, the public health departments that are at the center of distribution have been starved of resources for decades, particularly after 2008.

It isn't hard to think up a simple set of rules that would ensure shots are going into arms as quickly as possible. First, vaccinate all the health-care workers interacting with COVID patients, then everyone in nursing homes (as is conventional wisdom, to be fair). Then distribute shots to hospitals and pharmacies, or set up temporary distribution sites, and instead of trying to prioritize people according to some complex need calculation, do simple age cutoffs so only a driver's license or some other ID card is needed.

Start by inviting people over 90, who will get vaccinated on a first-come-first-serve basis. Write their names and contact info down so they can be called in for their second shot. Then if there are any doses left, invite everyone over 85, and so on down the age ranks. When the next batch of vaccine comes in, run through that process again — and if shots are near expiration and there isn't time to set up any kind of screen, just hand them out at random as a Kentucky Walgreens recently did.

Finally, as former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb argues, hand out the shots as they come in, rather than reserving half for the second dose (as is currently being done in many states), because there should be an ever-greater supply as time passes. It is worth risking some people missing their second shot to get as many people partially protected as possible.

Now, I'm not saying that's the best idea, it's just an illustrative example of a rough-and-ready scheme to get shots into arms that can be scaled up indefinitely so no shots sit idle. Older states like Florida should use fine-grained age brackets so people aren't waiting in line for hours, which is what happened when they invited everyone over 65 at once.

All this speaks to the enormous scale of the task facing President-elect Biden. Frankly I do not believe he will get very close to the standard of other wealthy countries, but on the other hand he could not possibly do any worse than Trump. Let's hope when the void at the center of the American state is filled by something, the pace of vaccination can be drastically accelerated, and 2021 isn't the nightmare that 2020 was.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
High-Stakes Trump-Putin Summit on Ukraine Underway in Alaska
Iranian Protection Offers Chinese Vehicle Shipments a Cost Advantage over Japanese and Korean Makers
Saudi Arabia accelerates renewables to curb domestic oil use
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez announce engagement
Asia-Pacific dominates world’s busiest flight routes, with South Korea’s Jeju–Seoul corridor leading global rankings
Private Welsh island with 19th-century fort listed for sale at over £3 million
Sam Altman challenges Elon Musk with plans for Neuralink rival
Australia to Recognize the State of Palestine at UN Assembly
The Collapse of the Programmer Dream: AI Experts Now the Real High-Earners
Armenia and Azerbaijan to Sign US-Brokered Framework Agreement for Nakhchivan Corridor
British Labour Government Utilizes Counter-Terrorism Tools for Social Media Monitoring Against Legitimate Critics
WhatsApp Deletes 6.8 Million Scam Accounts Amid Rising Global Fraud
Nine people have been hospitalized and dozens of salmonella cases have been reported after an outbreak of infections linked to certain brands of pistachios and pistachio-containing products, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada
Texas Residents Face Water Restrictions While AI Data Centers Consume Millions of Gallons
Tariffs, AI, and the Shifting U.S. Macro Landscape: Navigating a New Economic Regime
India Rejects U.S. Tariff Threat, Defends Russian Oil Purchases
United States Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
Thousands of Private ChatGPT Conversations Accidentally Indexed by Google
China Tightens Mineral Controls, Curtailing Critical Inputs for Western Defence Contractors
OpenAI’s Bold Bet: Teaching AI to Think, Not Just Chat
BP’s Largest Oil and Gas Find in 25 Years Uncovered Offshore Brazil
JPMorgan and Coinbase Unveil Partnership to Let Chase Cardholders Buy Crypto Directly
British Tourist Dies Following Hair Transplant in Turkey, Police Investigate
WhatsApp Users Targeted in New Scam Involving Account Takeovers
Trump Deploys Nuclear Submarines After Threats from Former Russian President Medvedev
Germany’s Economic Breakdown and the Return of Militarization: From Industrial Collapse to a New Offensive Strategy
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
Kurdistan Workers Party Takes Symbolic Step Towards Peace in Northern Iraq
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
AI Raises Alarms Over Long-Term Job Security
Saudi Arabia Maintains Ties with Iran Despite Israel Conflict
Russia Formally Recognizes Taliban Government in Afghanistan
×