One year ago, the government told us that we would have hundreds of millions of vaccinations available. Then, over the summer, the prediction was that 40 million would be on hand by the end of October.
Last month, the estimate was scaled back to 28 million. And, as of late last week, only 11.5 million had been delivered, leaving tens of millions vulnerable and, tragically, likely leading to hundreds of preventable deaths. Given the tendency of the virus to strike the young, many of those deaths will be among children.
It should be a fairly simple task to produce and distribute a vaccine - as we do with regular flu shots each and every year. But it was apparently beyond the capacity of the Obama Administration to manage such a routine feat.
This is just another classic example of the incompetence of government. The fed wants to run your health care but can't even pass out flu shots.
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ReplyDeleteIt actually really doesn't have much to do with gov. The CDC merely directs the flow of the vaccine while creation is left up to private corps such as medimmune. The problem is that it takes 6 months to develop 1 batch of the vaccine as it is grown and incubated in eggs within a lab. They're pumping them out as fast as they can, the cdc directs the flow, and then another private company distributes them based on the cdc's directions. The vaccine would have been included in the regular flu shot, but wasn't finished in enough time to be included in the latest batches. While the gov. erred in their projections for the # of vaccines that would be available, they were basing those projections on the numbers given to them by contracted corporations. Meanwhile Fema, state and country medical associations, and the red cross are working to inform the public of preventative measures and preparing in case of an emergency. It's been a rather successful mobilization after the embarrassment that hurricane katrina created. If you like I can send you the memo I wrote up after the emergency briefing last week. I suppose you would consider the Post-9/11 GI bill to be a failure too, however, I can dispute that as well through another emergency briefing I attended. It's interesting as all hell.
ReplyDeleteExactly though proving my point, that the government is not efficient at running thing like this. It is classic politics or government in general.
ReplyDeleteYes i think that would be interesting to see. Send it to me.