President Biden launched his COVID war plan on Thursday, promising that “aid is on the way.” Unfortunately, it is far from clear that the strategy will meet the challenge.
The 198-page plan promises to “do no effort to ensure that Americans can be vaccinated quickly, effectively and fairly.” Washington will encourage producers to boost vaccine production, through the Defense Production Act, and target “supply shortfalls.” The new president has signed several executive orders to launch the program.
Everything is wonderful, but Biden’s goal of 100 million vaccines in 100 days or 1 million a day, as Betsy McCaughey mentioned on Thursday, will not create herd immunity until July. For that, the nation must at least vaccinate 1.8 million people daily. And reaching even 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 put on his typical “Give me a break, man.” Is the average honeymoon over? One can only hope.
The plan also places high priority on ensuring “equity, including between racial, ethnic and rural / urban lines”. How about making sure everyone gets vaxxed?
Images for higher priority recipients can’t be lost if those people aren’t available, but they should go to everyone instead. This is the practice in Israel, where almost a quarter of the population has had at least one dose – compared to only about 4% of Americans.
Nor is it a good sign that Biden’s aides are already apologizing and blaming President Donald Trump’s people: “What we inherit is much worse than we could have imagined,” complained the new White House COVID coordinator, Jeff Zients .
Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned again on Thursday of a “deep shortage” of vaccines in the city. “We continue to cancel meetings, rather than book more meetings,” he said.
And while he claimed that the city’s vaccination program “pulls all the bottles,” a column by Allan Ripp in Thursday’s Post painted a truly nightmarish picture of what it means to try to be hit here.
Yes, putting the vaccine in people’s arms fast it is a huge challenge. But countries like Israel have done it. With 4,000 Americans dying every day, leaders like Biden, de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo must go fast – and face the challenge.