A quick look at covid-19 vaccinations, country by country, shows the USA well ahead of other countries. But dive just below the surface and the data tells a different story. While more than 2.1 million people received their first covid-19 vaccine, more than 9.3 million doses were waiting to be injected into the American’s arms, according to figures from the Centers for disease control. At the current pace, the US will take a decade to achieve critical vaccination limit so that we can overcome this mess safely.
AN federal leadership vacuum is leaving Americans unnecessarily exposed to the biggest public health crisis in a century, the effects of which have manifested themselves right before our eyes, with 334,000 Americans dead and hospitals so overburdened that some are refusing ambulances. With the stakes so high, there is a collective failure to meet the moment rooted in individualism conservatism. And IIt is a wake-up call for what awaits us in the coming decades of the climate crisis, unless we act decisively and collectively to prevent ecological collapse.
The launch of the vaccine in the United States followed a family course in the Trump era of big promises, failure to keep them, and then blaming it elsewhere. The administration promised vaccinate 20 million Americans until the end of December. We are a day off the calendar turning to January and 20 million doses of Pfizer / BioNTech and Modern vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month are not even distributed, let alone almost go into people’s arms.
Despite knowing this, and with the prospect of these vaccines being approved, little seems to have been done to establish a realistic implementation of vaccines outside the establishment of a large round number goal. The Republican-controlled Senate did not pass a bill to give cash-strapped states the funds to distribute them by the end of last week. The relief account includes $ 8 billion for states to distribute vaccines, cash what states were asking since october. Nothing stopped the Senate fromI am approving this project, but majority leader Mitch McConnell was more committed to his project to reshape the judiciary, confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and trying to protect corporations from coronavirus lawsuits than delivering the help they need.
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The Trump administration was also absent. The president’s main contribution so far has been tweet on Tuesday, “It is up to the states to manage. Move! “As a kind of abusive cheerleader. Meanwhile, Operation Warp Speed moved the goalposts, counting Stat News the plan all the time was for to distribute 20 million doses by the end of December despite the program chief having previously said that this was the vaccination target.
Establishing and implementing a vaccine program is not an easy task, and it is fair to expect some stumbles, even with months of execution time. It is not entirely up to the federal government, and in the coming months, we will certainly learn about the failures of the state, not to mention the failures of an intensely capitalist society that allows the rich to jump the line (something that is already happening for Moderna board members) But the failure of the richest country on Earth to do so and, rather than, moving at a rate of vaccination that it would take 10 years to properly protect against covid-19 is real failed-state territory.
The Biden administration will have to use all instruments at its disposal to speed up the vaccination rate, reduce unnecessary lives sacrificed, and reduce economic damage. Pelected resident Biden has promised so much, saying it plans to “move heaven and earth to take us in the right direction”. With the new, more contagious variation of the coronavirus just discovered in Colorado, that effort cannot come soon.
The vaccine parable – much like the coronavirus test and prevention parable before it – exposes the total failure of the past four decades to accept the federal government’s Reagan view. A void government coupled with a toxic brand of individualism driven by conservative Fox News for OANN Breitbart has left the US unable to do what it needs to do. If we do not pay attention to the parable as we move into the decade of the climate crisis, the results be catastrophic.
An effective national vaccine program requires a high degree of coordination, experience, money and strong leadership. But alongside an effective national program to decarbonize all sectors of the economy, it’s like frying an egg compared to preparing a 24-course molecular gastronomy meal. Fully decarbonizing the US at the pace and scale necessary to avoid catastrophic levels of warming will require all facets of government pulling together in the same direction along with trillions of dollars in investments for new infrastructure, a fair transition for fossil fuel workers, has increased public transportation and more. Simultaneously with the reduction of emissions, the USA will also have to adapt to the impacts already underway. Again, this will require long-term thinking, strong supervision and coordination and staggering sums of money. (The cost of doing nothing is disorderly higher, both in terms of economy and human life, so save me how we’re going to throw it in the trash.)
Most importantly, cleaning up the country’s emissions and protecting its citizens will have to be a sustained effort for several decades until the last ton of carbon from sectors difficult to mitigate like concrete and aviation is slaughtered and the last community in the Navajo Nation is connected to the clean energy and the economic opportunities of the 21st century. The Biden government may well get us started on this course, even without the Senate, but each president and Congress thereafter it will have to keep going or risk American – and even global – ruin.
All of this will require us to learn from the flaws in the American type of conservative governance that the pandemic has revealed. Instead of a government that focuses on the things that really matter – human well-being, protection against economic and health impacts of covid-19, rapid vaccinations – we have one that has been reduced and is only concerned with protecting corporate profits and members of the Congress itself.
In an instantly iconic campaign ad earlier this year, Senator Ed Markey reversed the famous JFK line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. ”Instead, the senator put it this way: “Iit’s time to start asking what your country can do for you. “So far, it seems that Republicans (and some Democrats) have not heard that question. With little time left and so many lives lost in the pandemic and the climate crisis, it’s time to start asking for a little more.