The Goal Posts May Be Moving Again—Here’s How Long Dr. Fauci Says It Will Take To Get Americans Vaccinated
Reading between the lines, we’re going to be in lockdown until next fall. Dr. Fauci, who is being kept on as the go-to Covid-19 disease guy for President Joe Biden, said that the U.S. won’t be able to vaccinate 70% to 85% of adults until the end of the summer, which “means a semblance of normalcy by the fall.”
I wear a mask and social distance. I had Covid-19 early on, so did my brother, relatives and co-workers. We fully understand how much it sucks. Being young—okay, Gen-X middle-ageish and relatively healthy—I was able to get through it mostly unscathed. My brother and I noticed that we now exhibit weird lingering symptoms that we didn’t have before. It feels as if I have asthma and shortness of breath, fatigue and body aches. To put this into perspective, I eat healthy and exercise regularly—at least three to five days a week (TBH, it’s not marathon running or lifting 500 pound weights, but enough to stave off the pandemic weight gain and not become a big, sloppy, couch-potato mess). My son’s nonchalant response to my complaining is, “Dad, it’s not Covid. You’re just old,” and he might be right.
My overall concern is that the goal posts have been constantly moved by our not-so-smart political leaders. It went from bending the curve to, “OMG! We must close all of the schools and shut everything down and don’t you dare question our haphazard, knee-jerk edicts.
Conveniently, the media avoids talking about some of our politician’s policies that went horribly wrong. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sent Covid-infected patients to nursing homes. Once warehoused there, the most vulnerable grandmothers, presumably unknowingly basted in the highly contagious disease and it spread like wildfire among the other residents. Thousands of elderly and infirmed people, the very same ones that our so-called leaders proclaimed and promised at the beginning of the pandemic to protect, were sent to their untimely deaths. This was a dark and dreadful act that happened, but gets swept under the rug because it’s uncomfortable to talk about.
Dr. Fauci seems like a lovable doctor who harkens from back-in-the-day when they made house calls with their little black bags and cared more about their patients than their bank accounts. The challenge with Fauci and the politicians is that they have a different agenda. It’s easier and career-protecting for them to say keep things shut down until after 90% or more of the population is vaccinated. It sounds reasonable, but it could take much longer than the projected next fall or summertime.
Their risk/reward scenario is this: if they open up too quickly and people contract the disease in large numbers and die, the politicians and doctors, like Fauci, will be vilified. If they demand lockdowns, less people may get sick, but would complain about losing their livelihoods and their mental health condition worsens. It’s safer for them to just say something like, “Let’s wait another month,” followed by “just two more months” and on and on and on.
The concern is that at the current rate of vaccinations, we won’t get to these numbers until 2022. Fauci, recognizing the problem said, “The only way to solve a problem is to own it.” He added, “Everybody wear a mask, everybody adhere to the public health measures, get the vaccine out as expeditiously as possible, do everything we can to get the doses available and to get them into people’s arms.”
Roughly more than 17.5 million doses have been administered—in a county that has about 330 million people— and officials say they aren’t getting the vaccines fast enough to meet demand.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp complained that he’s seeing an unacceptable rise in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Kemp cites that the 120,000 doses allotted per week to Georgia isn’t sufficient enough to vaccinate seniors and other high-risk residents, as there is significantly “more demand than we have supply.”
New York City, according to CNN, doesn’t have enough “doses to vaccinate members of the NYPD and FDNY.” In Los Angeles, residents over 65 years old waited in line for up to five hours to receive their shots at Dodger Stadium, said LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. He advised those who were coming for their shots to be prepared, “There may be a wait…so use the restroom beforehand, bring water and snacks and make sure your gas tank is filled up or your car is charged.”
Dr. Vivek Murthy, Biden’s pick for Surgeon General, admitted that we must speed up the vaccinations, saying, “We cannot take a year in order to get to the critical levels of vaccination that we need in this country.” Murthy urged, “We’ve got to get there sooner.”
There are other problems too. The Kaiser Family Foundation, in a study, found that “about six in 10 Americans don’t know when or where to get a coronavirus vaccine. Understandably large numbers of people are frustrated, angry and confused.”
Hopefully, Biden and his team will devise a plan to expedite the vaccinations. The recent weekly and month jobs reports have been dismal. The economists squarely place the staggering amount of job losses on the disease. They contend that the virus has stopped people from conducting their usual spending activities, as they’re stuck indoors. As a consequence, companies have suffered and were forced to layoff workers. As more people are forced into unemployment, they spend less and the cycle continues.
To break this downward spiral, the plague needs to be stopped. We’re putting all of our hopes on the vaccine. The sooner it’s given out, the quicker we’ll get out of this terrible mess.
Serious question—does anyone have any good ideas to get the vaccines out to people quickly?