The CDC map currently shows Arizona and California right at the top of the current plague level chart:
Former media whipping state South Dakota (unmasked and un-shut, with a heretical governor who says that government cannot stop a respiratory virus) is way down the list at 48 daily infections per 100,000 people, half the AZ/CA level. Yet South Dakota is #1 in “Percentage of distributed vaccines that have been administered” at 69% (Becker’s Hospital Review). Arizona is #49, behind only Georgia, at 18%. California at #47 with less than 24% administered.
California and Arizona would seemingly have more motivation than almost all of the other states to move vaccines out of warehouses and into bodies. Why wouldn’t they be doing clinics at midnight if that’s what it takes to use up the vaccine as soon as it arrives? Shouldn’t we see dramatic TV footage of coffee-and-donut-fueled late night shot clinics in hospitals, nursing homes, etc.?
(It does not seem to be the case that California and Arizona received extra vaccine. They’re also near the bottom of states ranked by percentage of population that has been vaccinated. 1.3 percent for California and 1.2 percent for Arizona (NYT))
Admittedly it is tougher to get organized to administer shots when the same personnel are needed to give COVID-19 tests, etc., but New Jersey and Rhode Island are near the top of the infection chart and are managing to administer vaccine shots at the same time. And Israel, which has its own raging plague, has managed to vaccinate over 18 percent of its population so far over roughly the same time period.
Related:
- TIME vaccine page
- percent population vaccinated by country (U.S. is #5 at 1.8 percent; the infrastructure and manufacturing champs in China on whom I would have bet are at just 0.31 percent)
- “Why 300 Doses of Vaccine Sat Unused in Freezers for 2 Weeks” (NYT): Dr. Peter Meacher expected to receive just a small supply of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine to inoculate his staff at a network of clinics that he oversees in New York City. Instead, 600 doses arrived late last month, far more than he needed. … Dr. Meacher said he would like to give the extra vaccine to high-risk patients, but had not for fear of violating strict eligibility rules from the state and city about who can receive it. … “It’s stressful and frustrating to have vaccine and to be unable to start giving it to our patients as quickly as we would like,” said Dr. Meacher, chief medical officer for the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in Manhattan, which serves some 18,000 L.G.B.T.Q. New Yorkers.
Vaccination is very difficult. California and Arizona don’t have enough theoretical physicists who want to work late.
Why aren’t Arizona and California vaccinating people at midnight? Incompetent leaders.
If you like your COVID vaccine, you can get your COVID vaccine!
…. once we’ve determined there’s nobody else in the country who deserves it more than you.
…. and you may get it whether you like it or not.
The fine people in the California Republic believe in Masala chai tea, not in vaccinations.
Maybe related to the location/size of the proper storage freezers and their distance from vaccination sites? Heck this time of the year in South Dakota, one could just leave them outdoors on the north side of a building!
Also logistically, easier to manage/administer 45K doses (SD) vs 2M (CA). But note how well Ohio is doing with 359K doses, especially with it’s 11M people.
Paul: I don’t think the problem can be that logistics are more challenging when a single bureaucracy handles a larger number of doses. I am informed by friends on Facebook that the solution to most challenges is a larger federal role and centralized management from Washington, D.C. South Dakota, therefore, should be crippled compared to California. South Dakota is ranked #49 in the percentage of residents’ income collected via state and local taxes (see https://taxfoundation.org/state/south-dakota/ ) and therefore can’t have a full-scale California-style bureaucracy that is capable of tackling big challenges.
If we assume it’s been 25 days since vaccine shipments arrived in Massachusetts, we’ve proceeded at a rate of about 5,600 people per day throughout the state. Since two doses are required, I will cut that in half and say 2,300 inoculations per day.
I hope that doesn’t represent our maximum capacity! It had better improve dramatically. At the rate they’re going, vaccinating 80% of 6.9 million people two times will take 2,400 days, or more than 6.5 years. So they’re going to have to speed things up by a lot.
I spoke to my primary care physician via telemedicine visit today and he informed me that even with two comorbidities I won’t likely be getting vaccinated until “spring or summer.” He didn’t seem to know what the MA DPH vaccine website says, because it indicates “February-April” for Tier II. So either he hasn’t bothered to visit the Massachusetts page because he’s waiting for guidance from his own health care group, or he’s trying to tell me something.
Addendum: If we take the latest WHO definition of “Herd Immunity” at face value (i.e., it can only be achieved through vaccination) and accept Anthony Fauci’s threshold of 80%, and the rate doesn’t improve dramatically in MA, can we say it’s plausible that we’ll be fighting COVID-19 with lockdowns well into Biden’s second term?
Sorry, 2800 inoculations per day, so that cuts it down to about 1,971 days or 5.4 years. A little bit quicker, but still well into Biden’s second term.
Why aren’t Arizona and California vaccinating people at midnight?
Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary… It’s well known the SARS-COV-2 virus is nocturnal. As demonstrated by all the curfews instituted from Paris, France to Tucson, AZ, and from Israel to North Carolina.
I’m in California, and it appears to me this is a simple lack of will by the government. The government throughout this whole Covid-19 episode *has* had the will to organize to have the trash picked up once a week at virtually every dwelling in the state. But somehow the government is now whining that it is impossibly difficult to deliver two doses of a vaccine “in the middle of a pandemic”?
If this were actually an emergency, and/or if people with power actually cared to make this happen, they could simply turn the effort over to any stellar logistics company (Waste Management, or Amazon, or why not Chick-fil-A?).
And the whole argument about freezers is a red herring. The vaccines are shipped via UPS in a glorified pizza box (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfDFWshQmbM&feature=youtu.be). Additionally, the vaccine can be stored in a normal refrigerator for 5 days before administering (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/downloads/storage-summary.pdf).
It is simply maddening to hear the talk about how big a problem this is, and how much our leaders purportedly care, and yet almost nobody is rolling off of the couch to get something done.
The Biden Administration has promised 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days. You have to wait until they take power to receive one on the newly accelerated schedule.
The most important thing, as I’ve said before, is to establish a very clear, bright line.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/08/955005344/biden-vows-to-distribute-100-million-covid-19-vaccine-doses-in-his-first-100-day
CalSK: Your comment reminds me how close California is to Mexico, which has a lot of qualified medical personnel. Can you imagine how enthusiastic Mexicans would be if we offered them $100/shot to administer these vaccines? Californians who wanted to get vaccinated could drive over the border, get a shot that would be billed to Uncle Sam, relax at a Baja beach, and then drive back.
philg: you’re right on that, and we Californians are ready to travel anywhere nice, as long as we’re wearing our mask and have Internet service!
Three paragraphs from today’s Los Angeles Times, with my comments in braces.
Fun with COVID-19
Los Angeles Times
January 15, 2021
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-13/explainer-vaccine-push-gains-steam-but-many-still-face-wait
The process is fairly simple, like getting a flu shot. People may have to show their identification or verify their eligibility before they get jabbed in the arm. Shots will be recorded in state and local vaccine registries.
[Unlike voting, for which no identification is needed.]
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-14/who-team-arrives-wuhan-investigate-coronavirus-origins
According to the WHO’s published agenda for its research, there are no plans to assess whether there might have been an accidental release of the coronavirus at the Wuhan lab, as some U.S. politicians, including President Trump, have claimed.
[That should simplify the investigation.]
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-15/in-pivot-to-mass-vaccination-will-california-catch-up
The Lincoln Park site is administering about 1,000 to 1,200 vaccines per day, Dang said. That requires a staff of about 30 to 40 people working an eight-hour shift, of whom about 10 are administering the shots, he said.
[That’s quite a tooth-to-tail ratio.]