A broken freezer containing over sixteen hundred doses of COVID-19 vaccine could have been catastrophic. Instead, quick thinking and bold action turned a disaster into a miracle in Seattle. When it became clear that Moderna’s doses would expire quickly, two clinics split the doses and sent the gun call late, so to speak.
Eventually, each dose was used and over sixteen hundred lucky Seattle residents passed the vaccination curve:
Hundreds of people rushed to clinics at the University of Seattle and the University of Washington on Thursday night to try to receive a COVID-19 vaccine before the doses expired.
Spokesmen for both Swedes and UW said a freezer holding Modern’s COVID-19 vaccine broke at Kaiser Permanente, leaving 1,650 doses of the vaccine at risk of expiration.
The Swedes and UW split the doses and began administering them.
“The teams worked vigilantly and in close partnership all night and early morning to ensure that all doses were used and that vaccination was not lost,” said a representative of Kaiser Permanente Washington.
Given the highly regulated environment in which this effort took place, this rapid thinking and agile action is all the more impressive. We’ve already heard stories of doses breaking down, either accidentally or in more suspicious circumstances, and we should expect at least the former type of hiccup to occur occasionally. Normally, regulations and sanctions for violating them could have put the doses in the trash, because this early stage of vaccinations does not exactly reward exclusive thinking.
For example, as several people have pointed out on Twitter, Andrew Cuomo’s draconian sanctions for vaccination outside his rigid regime would never have produced this kind of untimely solution. Hundreds of people would never have received these doses. Instead, with room for innovation and creative thinking, Seattle health care providers turned a failure into a thrilling success, all between 11:00 and 2:30 p.m.
Men and women who have taken these steps to protect their community and make the most of every endangered dose deserve congratulations. Hopefully we’ll start seeing enough doses soon, so we don’t have to stick to rigid distribution models in the first place.
Addendum: Remember where this happened – in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Where the anarchists seized several blocks of flats in the city in June and created CHAZ – Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Imagine if the city still tolerated this when it happened. Innovation and creativity require public order and stability, as well as space for quick decisions without draconian penalties.