Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that the federal government would start releasing COVID-19 doses that had been held in reserve for second shots, as part of an effort to ramp up a distribution process that has been plagued by chaos and delay. “This new system gives states a strong incentive to ensure that...doses are going to work protecting people rather than sitting on shelves or in freezers,” Azar said at the time. The move was applauded by many, including Ohio governor Mike DeWine, who called it a “welcome change,” with other supporters saying that despite the fact that it might result in a small delay for people’s second shots, it was more important to get as many doses out as quickly as possible as deaths from the virus hit record numbers and a new, even more contagious variant spreads through the U.S. There was just one teeny, tiny problem with the new plan, so small that the federal government apparently didn’t think to mention it at the time. It didn‘t have any more doses to ship out. Whoops! Their bad.
On Friday, The Washington Post reported the news of the colossal fuckup:
Now, local health and government officials throughout the country who had expected their exceedingly limited supply of vaccines to be doubling starting next week, and had planned to dramatically expand availability to millions of high-risk and elderly people, are learning that, no, that’s not happening. And, not surprisingly, they’re pretty pissed. On Friday, Oregon governor Kate Brown took to Twitter to express her palpable—and reasonable!—outrage, writing: “Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses. I am demanding answers from the Trump Administration. I am shocked and appalled that they have set an expectation on which they could not deliver, with such grave consequences. This is a deception on a national scale. Oregon’s seniors, teachers, all of us, were depending on the promise of Oregon’s share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us.”
Colorado governor Jared Polis was similarly enraged, tweeting: “I’m shocked we were lied to and there is no national reserve. Federal announcements that 2nd dose being held in reserve was going to be released led us to expect 210,000 doses next week, other Govs made similar plans now we find out we’ll only get 79,000 next week.
Of course, ask the Trump administration, and it did nothing wrong. States just misunderstood them when they claimed many more doses were on the way. Per CNN:
The Trump administration being the Trump administration, though, the odds of there being any accountability or even acknowledgement that they screwed up are exactly zero. Speaking to The Washington Post on Friday, the head of Operation Warp Speed claimed, “I don’t think there is a need to change anything about distribution. Distribution is frankly functioning and working perfectly.” Yes, perfectly!
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Weirdly, the incoming Biden people feel differently
Perfect, abysmal failure, potato, po-tah-to. Per Bloomberg:
According to the Washington Post, Biden’s transition team has been asking for more than a month to attend meetings that contained “real-time information on production and distribution of vaccine,” but were rebuffed until this past week. The team was also reportedly not invited to attend the meetings during which Trump officials decided to make major changes to the distribution plan, including recommending offering the shot immediately to millions of people under the age of 65 with high-risk conditions, a move the incoming administration “fears could overwhelm state supply and already stressed sign-up systems, while creating unrealistic expectations for those eager to get inoculated.” Particularly when states are being promised reserves that don’t in fact exist!
Some comforting thoughts as we head into the last weekend of Trump‘s presidency
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Trump doesn’t like exceedingly appropriate comparisons to Nixon
Nixon could not be reached for comment though it feels like he should be the one who is offended:
To be fair, Nixon didn’t incite an angry mob who wanted, and tried, to kill Ford. So there’s that.
Elsewhere!
Rioters storming Capitol came dangerously close to Pence (Washington Post)
From Olympic medalist to Capitol rioter: The fall of Klete Keller (Washington Post)
CDC says highly transmissible coronavirus variant could become dominant U.S. strain by March (Washington Post)
Trump weighing a pardon for Steve Bannon (Politico)
Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan Chase should absolutely be ‘scared s---less’ about fintech threat (CNBC)
Why Joe Biden Can't Bring His Peloton to the White House (Popular Mechanics)
Andrew Yang Walks Into a Bodega — or Does He? (GrubStreet)
Tower of London raven presumed dead after multi-week absence (UPI)
— Jared and Ivanka’s Final Chapter in Washington Demolished Their Future
— After a Day of Violence, Trump’s Allies Are Jumping Ship
— The Unbearable Whiteness of Storming the Capitol
— Gary Cohn Is a Test Case for Trying to Wash Off the Trump Stink
— The Deeply Unsettling, Not Entirely Surprising Images of Trump’s Capitol Hill Mob
— Twitter Finally Muzzling Trump Is Too Little, Too Late
— The Eerie Charlottesville Echoes of Trump Supporters’ Capitol Coup
— From the Archive: Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies Are Church and He Is the Gospel
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