As with everything else in the response where government had a role to play but didn't, the vaccine rollout in the United States has been badly botched so far. Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is the culprit.
Source: Raw Story
Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, tore into the Trump administration on Wednesday during an appearance on CNN in which he said it appeared that there is no plan at the federal level to coordinate vaccine distribution.
"The administration has... decided that their job essentially ends when the vaccine gets to the state and there's nothing more to do," he said. "We should have set up vaccination centers. It's not like we had no idea that vaccines were coming, we have known for months that this was going to happen and there were no planning for that last mile."
Jha went on to say he was particularly surprised that no planning went into vaccine distribution months ago, as the Trump administration should have learned from its early failures to procure sufficient COVID-19 testing kits that they needed to plan ahead.
"It strikes me as a level of incompetence I have to say I am stunned by," he said. "We did this with testing, we did this with PPE, but I thought we were going to get it better with vaccines and it doesn't feel like we are, and now states are going to have to figure this out."
And why are so many people pointing fingers at the Trump administration? via Stat:
The logistics of the rollout have been largely left up to states to navigate. States and local public health officials have warned for months that they would need more than $8 billion in additional funding to stand up the infrastructure needed to administer vaccines. The Trump administration instead provided states $340 million in funding to prepare for vaccinations. Congressional lawmakers also balked for months at appropriating additional funding for vaccine distribution, although the coronavirus stimulus package signed by President Trump on Sunday included $8 billion in funding for that effort.
Incredible.
