Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Vaccination: A Call for The Biden Plan

Phew! We have gone from a President who not only didn’t understand how government worked, didn’t see its potential for helping the vast majority of Americans, to one well-versed in the mechanics of government, one who understands that the immense often bumbling bureaucracy can raise us up. The past-President understood how he could enrich his “brand,” as well as his hotels, golf courses, and not-too-hidden assets. His family thrived, but the country didn’t. So welcome, President Biden. We need you.

The COVID debacle has taught us to respect the ultimate “F” word: facts.

The virus is not a nefarious Chinese import, a Democrat-fostered hoax, a malady akin to the flu. It has killed millions worldwide, continues to wreak havoc.

It does not bypass all the social gatherings we thrive on; instead, it thrives when we gather.

The choice of masks does not mark a statement of freedom, but a statement of stupidity, and selfishness.

Healthy people do not carry COVID. The data show that healthy people are carriers.

The economy will not bounce back if we ignore the virus. Our unemployment rolls grow.

And when it comes to vaccination, the key to vanquishing COVID, we have learned some hard facts in the last few months when President Trump was AWOL, golfing, watching television, or inciting riots to fuel the lie that he won, when the country forcefully said he lost.

The development of the vaccine was not the deus ex machina that would vanquish the virus.

Instead, the development of the vaccine was step one in a process of transportation, storage, and, finally, distribution — a chain that demanded more than the Trumpian bureaucracy thought through.

Here are some more facts.

Simply shipping vaccine to the states would get us all vaccinated. Not true. From the hodgepodge of state responses, we have seen that shipping vaccines to states will not suffice. States need money, need staff, need direction.

Giving fewer vaccines to states than promised will be OK. Not true. Maybe hotelier Trump could delay payments to vendors, payment to staff, could reneg on contracts, maybe he could declare bankruptcy and walk away to forge a new scheme — but the federal government could not so easily walk away from this debacle. States have been clamoring: you promised this, you gave us less. Demand remains high, higher than ever as a new strain of the virus penetrates our borders.

The states’ algorithms to distribute a scarce vaccine fairly have worked to distribute the vaccine equitably, and efficiently. Not true. “Equitable and efficient” have not dovetailed. States have targeted people who work at-risk jobs and who live in at-risk facilities, like nursing homes and assisted living homes Yet for everybody else, states have made “computer literate” a requirement as people over age 75 (now 65 — but since there aren’t enough vaccines anyway, that new age-limit, designed to quell anger, hasn’t worked) try to figure out how to sign up on-line, even to scan insurance cards. In the quandary over fairness and access, states have had vaccine caches in storage. We have administered far fewer doses than have been sent to states (and, again, the number sent to states has fallen below need).

So, President Biden, we need you to marshal the strength of the federal government, to spur the production of more vaccines, as many as we need, to distribute them with a plan that uses the armed forces and the National Guard (we can take our military away from guarding the Capitol, state Capitols, and the White House) to set up vaccine centers throughout the country, in hospitals, stadiums, fields with tents. We can hold vaccination centers seven days a week, into the evening hours; we can use schools on weekends. Call it the Biden Plan, spurred by the urgency of the numbers of new cases, the number of new fatalities, the onslaught of the new strain of the virus. The goal: vaccinate as many of us as want the vaccine (as the case numbers grow, that number should grow too quickly.

Another sobering fact: our country will not rebound until we develop the herd immunity that lets us gather together safely. And we cannot do that without a stronger committed Uncle Sam behind the campaign.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2021

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