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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">There is a scar on my shoulder from the smallpox vaccine. I was too young to remember getting the shot.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">What I remember do remember was being in a very long line on a Sunday afternoon. At the end of the line, everyone was given a sugar cube. This was the Sabin Oral Sunday. </div><div><br></div>
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On Friday, January 1, 2021, 01:38:57 PM PST, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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<div>Quoting Nick Moffitt (<a href="mailto:nick@zork.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">nick@zork.net</a>):<br><br>> This rigid phasing model seems a lot like a useless trolley problem<br>> exercise that would best be shelved in favour of getting needles in<br>> arms as fast as possible.<br><br>More of this dynamic at work:<br><br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/health/heres-why-the-last-mile-of-vaccine-distribution-is-going-so-slowly.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/health/heres-why-the-last-mile-of-vaccine-distribution-is-going-so-slowly.html</a><br><br>Wherein lies the problem? Here's part 1 of 3, the thorniest and the <br>least tractible:<br><br> [C]ritically, public health experts say, federal officials have left<br> many of the details of the final stage of the vaccine distribution<br> process, such as scheduling and staffing, to overstretched local<br> health officials and hospitals.<br><br>And part 2, inexcusably bad planning but maybe not dose-destroying:<br><br> The holiday season has meant that people are off work and clinics<br> have reduced hours, slowing the pace of vaccine administration. <br><br>And part 3, again just a delay:<br><br> States have held back doses to be given out to their nursing homes<br> and other long-term-care facilities, an effort that is just gearing up<br> and expected to take several months. Across the country, just 8% of the<br> doses distributed for use in these facilities have been administered,<br> with 2 million yet to be given.<br><br><br>Locally:<br><br> In California, doctors are worried about whether there will be enough<br> hospital staff members to both administer vaccines and tend to the<br> swelling number of COVID-19 patients.<br><br>Gee, thanks, Trump Administration. Speaking of:<br><br> "We've taken the people with the least amount of resources and<br> capacity and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination —<br> which is actually getting the vaccines administered into people's arms,”<br> said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health.<br><br> Federal and state officials have denied they are to blame for the slow<br> rollout. Officials behind Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to<br> fast-track vaccines, have said that their job was to ensure that<br> vaccines are made available and get shipped out to the states. President<br> Donald Trump said in a tweet Tuesday that it was “up to the States to<br> distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the<br> Federal Government.”<br><br>They're the monarchs of 'Not my job, man. You want the actual work of<br>running a country done? Suck it up, hold bake sales, and substitute for<br>the missing government. We'll be superspreader-partying at Mar-a-Lago.'<br><br>Experts warn that, as pathetically inept as the Phase 1a rollout had<br>been across pretty much all US states, it was the -=easiest=- part,<br>because target front-line medical staff and residents of long-term care<br>facilities are in fixed known locations and easy to reach. Things look<br>likely to get much worse with Phase 1b:<br><br> It may be more difficult, public health officials say, to vaccinate<br> the next wave of people, which will most likely include many more older<br> Americans as well as younger people with health problems and front-line<br> workers. Among the fresh challenges: How will these people be scheduled<br> for their vaccination appointments? How will they provide documentation<br> that they have a medical condition or a job that makes them eligible to<br> get vaccinated? And how will pharmacies ensure that people show up and<br> that they can do so safely?<br><br><br>I've heard MAGA-heads reassure me there's absolutely _no problem_, because <br>the Mike Pence-helmed Operation Warp Speed @ HHS reached agreements with<br>large retail pharmacy chains such as Costco, Rite-Aid, Walgreens,<br>Walmart, and CVS, comprising 40,000 retail locations, to handle some<br>vague and unspecified part of rollout.<br><a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/11/12/trump-administration-partners-chain-independent-community-pharmacies-increase-access-future-covid-19-vaccines.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/11/12/trump-administration-partners-chain-independent-community-pharmacies-increase-access-future-covid-19-vaccines.html</a><br><br>Gosh, guys, Adam Smith's invisible hand appears to not be helping much,<br>and I think it's giving us the finger.<br><br><br> <br>Operation Warp Speed's official rollout plan projected 80% coverage of<br>the country's (330.7M) population by June -- which works out a bit over<br>3M planned vaccinations per _day_ on average. Supposedly, they were<br>going to have the first 20 million shot 1 of 2 vaccinations done by<br>yesterday. Instead, it seems they've with difficulty managed about 2<br>million -- front-line health care workers and some nursing home<br>residents. That's 2 million doses out of 11.5 million doses that were<br>delivered by Pfizer and Moderna -- an inocculation rate of about 65k per<br>day rather than the planned 2M per day -- i.e., slow by a factor of 30.<br><br>What's happening to the other 9.5 million dsses? I have no idea. The<br>Pfizer vaccine can be stored for a medium-long time as long as it<br>remains in deep freeze (-70 degrees C), but only five days after<br>transfer to regular freezers. The Moderna is good for a month in -20<br>degrees C normal freezers. So, maybe there aren't further fsck-ups<br>wasting them. Maybe.<br><br>(That 20M projection was itself a scaled-down promise, at the beginning of<br>December, of Operation Warp Speed's top _actual_ scientist, Dr. Moncef<br>Slaoui. Previous to that, the official supposed plan was the<br>Toddler-in-Chief's fatuous fantasy promise, in September 2020, that 100<br>million doses would ship by New Year's Eve.)<br><br>NBC News calculated that, if the present rollout rate continues based on<br>the rate observed for the first three weeks following approval,<br>inoculating enough Americans to bring the pandemic under control will<br>take approximately _ten years_.<br><br><br><br>Comparison: NYC did this thing right, in 1947. <br><br>On March 1, 1947, a couple stepped off a bus from Mexico City in midtown<br>Manhattan. The husband had a headache, rash, and some other symptoms,<br>but just took a lot of aspirin while doing shopping and sightseeing for<br>four days. On March 5, he checked into Bellevue and three days later<br>was transferred to the city's communicable disease hospital, Willard<br>Parker along the East River. The case got the attention of NYC's<br>commendably alert Commissioner of Health, Dr. Israel Weinstein, who was<br>very concerned and had four possible disease causes in mind when the<br>patient suddenly died on March 10. Autopsy revealed internal<br>haemorraging, but authorities still weren't sure. New patients who'd<br>been in contact with Patient Zero became ill -- and they shared the<br>trait of not having had smallpox shots. Oops. By mid-March, it was<br>becoming apparent that this was indeed smallpox, and the diagnosis was<br>confrimed by US Army Medical School Laboratory and Western Reserve<br>University scientists. <br><br>By early April, Dr. Weinstein had quietly started a serious<br>contact-tracing effort and started firing up a historically serious<br>public health campaign. NYC had last had a smallpox epidemic in 1875,<br>killing 2,000, but this could be a lot worse. A vaccine was available.<br>675,000 doses were immediately available, and several hundred thousand<br>more were shipped from other parts of the country. But smallpox is<br>highly infectious, so substantively the entire population would need the<br>shot.<br><br>Mayor William O’Dwyer called an emergency meeting with vaccine<br>manufacturers who went into maximum round-the-clock production.<br>Meanwhile, Dr. Weinstein started long-famous radio addresses, imploring<br>New Yorkers to line up to get the vaccine. Half a million doses were<br>given in the first two weeks, and 6,350,000 New Yorkers had been<br>immunised by the end of April. Queues went down the sidewalks in<br>driving rain, and around the block, waiting for the shot. <br><br>And that was the end of the outbreak -- two deaths, twelve cases.<br><br><br>That's _with_ leadership.<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>conspire mailing list<br><a href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br><a href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br></div>
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