This data is from the 5th – a few days old now, but it raises some serious questions.
Under Operation WARP SPEED, the military is responsible for delivering vaccines, but it is local, often private, health care providers that actually give people the vaccine, in accordance with each State’s “guidelines” (orders).
So it is interesting to see what percentage of the doses have been administered. According to the CDC, only 30.2% of the 15,418,500 doses have been administered. That is less than 5 million doses. Almost 70% are just sitting unused on a shelf. Incredible.
Here are some examples at the State level:
- New York has administered only 33.5% of its vaccines
- Pennsylvania has administered only 27.6% of its vaccines
- California has administered only 24.3% of its vaccines
- Virginia has administered only 23.2% of its vaccines
- Arizona has administered only 19.5% of its vaccines
In fact, of all 50 states, only five States have administered more than 50% of the doses they’ve already received:
- South Dakota – 62.2%
- North Dakota – 58.7%
- Tennessee – 50.8%
- Connecticut – 50.7%
- Maine – 50.5%
It is not just smaller States like the Dakotas. (Although there is some concern that the Dakotas were punished by CDC in the distribution because they did not lockdown.) It surely is not a shortage of qualified persons to give the shots.
Of course, it may be bureaucratic and political inertia and stupidity is causing this. They are playing games, or so they claim, with people’s lives. (Nothing new, of course.)
In fact, some of the recent games? I’ve mentioned Colorado’s insane prioritization of vaccines, giving members of the General Assembly, State agency heads, and “essential journalists” priority over those over eighty and in nursing homes. An example of stupidity in California is the State issuing orders that EMTs are NOT supposed to take “non-responsive” trauma and non-trauma patients, especially coronary patients to the hospital. Apparently (the article doesn’t say so) the EMTs are just to take them to the morgue! The excuse? The hospitals are overwhelmed.
The States have had six or seven months to get ready for the “second wave” everyone said was coming. We should also remember that States had more than half a year to prepare for the administration of the vaccines. So what’s going on?
All this just lends emphasis to the natural tendency of politicians, and especially the incoming administration, to take more and more FedGov actions and control over the prioritization and administration of the vaccination program. And more. Is this part of the thinking? Remember that Emperor Cuomo of New York had threatened – claimed – that he would not allow ANY vaccine developed under Trump’s watch to be administered in HIS State. (Anyone wanna bet Cuomo got his vaccine from the first batch delivered to NYS? Along with de Blasio and Schumer and Ocasio-Cortez?)
Maybe. But honestly, I don’t have the foggiest. Any ideas?
Guest Posting – A view from the Great Plains on our current situation
I am providing, without significant comments, this lengthy column by Margaret Figert. Margaret is a retired weekly newspaper publisher and editor. Her paper was located in the Sicangu (Lakota) Nation on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota on the Nebraska border. Her weekly column, Smoke Signals, is published weekly on Facebook. Margaret is generally conservative with some libertarian leanings. I do not necessarily endorse her comments or links; I feel it is good for lovers of liberty to get some idea of what other people in Flyover Country are thinking.
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