People get ready
To do otherwise would be careless
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has notified public health officials in all 50 states and five large cities to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to health-care workers and other high-risk groups as soon as late October or early November.”
—lead paragraph from a wire story
on our front page, Thursday
THE GOVERNMENT is prepping to distribute a vaccine for the covid-19 virus, once one is available. Or maybe two.
To some, this is considered controversial. To those who don’t see Every. Single. Thing. through political glasses, it seems the most sensible thing in the world. Or at least the most sensible thing in the nation’s health-care system.
There is no vaccine yet. There might be one next month, or maybe after the first of the year. But once the shots are available (if they’re shots), there should be a plan in place to distribute them. The government can’t boil an egg without a plan.
Think about the logistics. The U.S. of A. wants to protect hundreds of millions of people inside its borders, and possibly another 3-4 billion outside its borders, and get there the firstest with the mostest for health-care workers and the elderly, and make sure everything is done in an orderly manner, and on top of all that, maintain safety. Not only when delivering the medicine, but to keep folks safe as they go into clinics to get it. This is going to be bigger than boiling an egg.
The whole scenario—shipping, distributing, keeping the concoctions at sub-zero temps until administered—assumes that trials on a couple of different medicines will prove safe and effective. The effort can be scrapped at the last minute if the vaccine proves unreliable. But imagine the criticism if the vaccine was sitting in trucks, but the government has no plan to get it to the masses. Now that would be a controversy.
The CDC also asked the states to fast-track “permits and licenses for new distribution sites.” Seems prudent.
It also asked governors to waive, if necessary, requirements that could keep these facilities from opening. As long as the smoke alarms work and the fire escapes aren’t boarded up, that also seems prudent.
The CDC assures these waivers “in order to expedite vaccine distribution will not compromise the safety or integrity of the products being distributed.” We’ll just bet. Because heads would roll otherwise.
This latest news from the federal government isn’t a promise of a reliable vaccine. It’s not even the promise of a semi-reliable vaccine. But it sets the stage for something other than chaos, resentment, rancor, protest and distress when a vaccine is finally ready.
To some, these steps are controversial.
Everything is political these days.