President Biden released his COVID war plan on Thursday, promising that “aid is on the way”. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear whether the strategy will meet the challenge.
The 198-page plan promises to “spare no effort to ensure that Americans can be vaccinated quickly, effectively and equitably.” Washington will encourage manufacturers to increase vaccine production, through the Defense Production Act, and target “supply deficits”. The new prez has signed several executive orders to launch the program.
That’s great, but Biden’s goal of 100 million vaccines in 100 days, or 1 million a day, as Betsy McCaughey noted on Thursday, will not create collective immunity in July. For this, the country needs to vaccinate at least 1.8 million people daily. And reaching 1 million a day is far from certain.
When a reporter pointed out that 1 million is just 10 percent higher than the current number of daily doses, Biden was irritated by his typical “Give it a break, man”. Is the media honeymoon over yet? We can only wait.
The plan also places high priority on ensuring “equity, including between racial, ethnic and rural / urban lines”. How about making sure everyone is vaxxed?
Photos aimed at recipients of the highest priority cannot be missed if these people are not available, but they must go to anyone. This is the practice in Israel, where almost a quarter of the population has taken at least one dose – compared to only about 4% of Americans.
Nor is it a good sign that Biden’s advisers are already making excuses and blaming President Donald Trump’s parents: “What we are inheriting is much worse than we could have imagined,” lamented the new White House COVID coordinator, Jeff Zients .
Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio again warned Thursday of “a profound shortage” of the vaccine in the city. “We continue to have to cancel appointments instead of scheduling more appointments,” he said.
And while he claimed that the city’s vaccination program is “firing at all cylinders,” a column by Allan Ripp in Thursday’s Post painted a truly scary picture of what it’s really like to be bitten here.
Yes, putting the vaccine in people’s arms fast it is a huge challenge. But countries like Israel did that. With 4,000 Americans dying daily, leaders like Biden, de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo need to prepare quickly – and meet this challenge.