14 Comments

Your friend Zoe comes across as a bit of a Karen. I’m guessing as a health care provider she is probably a little stressed.

I am solely on the side of vaccinate as fast as u can.

I think the slowness is a result of the medical community trying to be to accurate about priorities.

Speed is more important than accuracy. Better to do more people and have the odd person slip throughout the system and get vaccinated early.

I’m still hanging on here in Texas on this job. Why do people think it’s a good place to move too! Hopefully I can last another month being lucky.

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Jan 5, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Great post. Longterm we also badly need a one-dose vaccine like the flu-shot already is, so more research/trials are also needed. Scheduling people for two shots and making sure they come for the second one is a big logistical headache. Especially if they have a bad reaction to that first shot. Ask anyone who's had to get two-dose vaccines for other diseases (or had to try and get them for their kids)--things happen that make that second shot not a sure thing.

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Jan 5, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

Not much to add other than, this is a very sobering read.

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Jan 5, 2021Liked by Noah Smith

"We are currently building up a system like that, but we will not be able to afford to scale it down or dismantle it once the initial vaccination drive has been completed."

If you think a Republican Senate will approve funding for maintaining a vaccine infrastructure purely as a preventive measure, I've got a degree from Trump University to sell you. If the past 20+ years has taught us anything, it has taught us that Republicans are degenerate gamblers.

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Two things:

- Emphasizing using the defense production act. Here, here!

- Has anyone made a infographic showing both the dynamic of vaccine inoculation velocity and ordering of who gets vaccine?

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This is the first piece I've read that isn't just bitching and moaning or pointing fingers. It's a monstrous problem that will take a huge effort to overcome, but it is doable if we truly approach it as we did the war against fascism last century. It's ironic that, with all the failed "wars" on terrorism, drugs, crime, etc., we finally have something that justifies that kind of terminology. I just hope that our new leadership is up to the challenge and that it can sufficiently unify a deeply fractured nation.

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Don't forget the rest of the World. If the vaccine program only covers Americans, travel restrictions will have to remain in place forever.

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Thank you Noah, great piece. Here in Alaska the public health crew in charge of vaccine distribution is doing a decent job so far. They've been able to adjust their rules as needed, first staying fairly strict with the priority tiers, then opening things up when the priority schemes were slowing things down. We're doing 65+ now. Soon the bottleneck will be lack of supply, which is as it should be.

They've had website issues that allowed non-prioritized people to get through, but so what? Getting doses in arms is good for everyone.

Contrast that to my other home state of Oregon which has a panel that has been arguing about the 'equity' issues around their prioritization scheme for weeks. Yes, there will be inequity, yes, there will be unfairness, but get those shots in arms! That's the most important thing.

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