States want doses, not shot centers
Tight supply fuels wariness to accept federal vaccine sites
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Biden administration’s plan to open 100 vaccination sites by the end of the month was initially embraced by governors and health officials, who considered it a much needed lifeline to get more Americans inoculated against the coronavirus.
But reality has quickly set in: Some are hesitating to take the offer, at least for now, saying they don’t need more places to administer doses. They just need more doses.
Eager to protect more people against the coronavirus, health officials in Oklahoma jumped at the chance to add large, federally supported vaccination sites. They wanted them in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and a third, midsize city, Lawton, thinking the extra help would allow them to send more doses to smaller communities that had yet to benefit.
“We felt like if we could get them in the metro areas, what that would allow us to do is ... free up a lot of our other resources to do more targeted vaccinations in underserved areas,” said state Deputy Health Commissioner Keith Reed.
Those plans are now on hold after the state learned that the sites would not come with additional vaccines. Instead, the doses would have to be pulled from the state’s existing allocation, and the three sites alone might have used more than half of Oklahoma’s vaccine supply.
“We’re not prepared to pull the trigger on it unless it comes with vaccine,” Reed said.
The Biden administration’s
virus response plan calls for opening 100 federally supported vaccination sites by the end of February. It is preparing to mobilize thousands of staffers and contractors from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. They already have been providing money, staffing or logistical support for many state and local vaccination efforts, but President Joe Biden’s plan specifically refers to launching new sites to help get vaccines to underserved communities.
The White House told Associated Press it could not provide a tally showing how many of the 100 new sites had been announced so far.
Getting Americans vaccinated will be key to suppressing the virus and fully reopening the economy.
So far, just over 46 million doses have been administered and the administration has pledged to ramp up daily doses to 1.5 million. Since the pandemic began nearly a year ago, more than 27 million Americans have been infected and the country is on the cusp of reaching 500,000 deaths.
Lack of adequate supplies across the country has led to canceled appointments, shuttered mega sites and the halting of first doses to ensure that people can get their second shots. Governors have said consistently over the past two weeks that their biggest need isn’t a new distribution system, it’s just getting more vaccine.
“It’s not necessary in Florida,” Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said of the large federally supported sites. “I would take all that energy
and I would put that toward more supply of the vaccine.”
Hesitancy over adding more vaccination centers without a significant increase in vaccines is coming from some of Biden’s biggest supporters. That includes some Democratic governors who roundly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to delegate much of the pandemic response to the states.
“Up until now, we’ve been under the impression that these sites do not come with their own supply of vaccine — which is the principal thing we need more of, rather than more ways to distribute what we already have,” said Tara Lee, spokeswoman for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. “If that changes and allocations are coming with federal sites, that would
change our calculations.”
Wisconsin health department spokeswoman Elizabeth Goodsitt said the agency is exploring how it might use the vaccination sites proposed by the White House but added, “Ultimately, we will need more vaccine in the state to support” them.
Other Democrats, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have expressed similar sentiments.
“The moment that FEMA says we will supply our centers with additional vaccine, we want one,” Beshear said.
FEMA officials referred questions about the vaccination site goal to the White House, which described the initial effort as a pilot period in which the government would provide limited doses directly to the vaccination sites.
Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 coordinator, told governors on a conference call last week that the administration is continuing to try to get more vaccines to the states. This week, states will be sent a total of 11 million doses, an increase of 500,000 compared with last week.
That’s not enough to convince some governors to invite the federal government. The halting effort in part reflects a seismic shift in the way the pandemic is being handled. The Trump administration left many decisions up to the states, but Biden has likened the pandemic response to a war effort requiring a much greater federal role.
While that approach is welcome in some places, governors want to be sure their states don’t lose any flexibility in how they manage vaccine distribution.
Mixed messages also haven’t helped. Officials in New York and Texas said the federal government told them that vaccines distributed in the federal sites there would not count against the states’ allocations. That’s different from what state officials elsewhere have been told.
An assurance like that would allow Oklahoma to reconsider its decision to halt plans for the three federally supported sites. Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Bruce Dart said the state did the right thing when it learned the sites would rely on the state’s own vaccine allocation.
He said the state continues to discuss the program’s future with the federal government. If it could guarantee the doses would come from a separate federal supply, Dart said, “We’d be the first ones to say, ‘Come on down.”’
WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell excoriated Donald Trump on Saturday for being “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but said he voted to acquit him at the impeachment trial because he believes the Senate had no jurisdiction over a former president.
Washington’s most powerful Republican used his strongest language to date to denounce Trump minutes after the Senate voted 57-43 to convict Trump but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to find him guilty.
It was a stunningly bitter castigation of Trump by McConnell, who could have used much of the same speech had he instead decided to convict Trump. Had McConnell voted to find Trump guilty, he has enough respect among his colleagues that many more of them may well have done the same.
Clearly angry, the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader said Trump’s actions surrounding the attack on Congress were “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” He even noted that though Trump is now out of office, he remains subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws.
“He didn’t get away with
anything yet,” McConnell said.
Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats on that vote, creating a clear majority against Trump and a bipartisan denunciation of his actions in helping spark the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
McConnell had signaled last month that he was open to finding Trump guilty, which in itself was an eye-opening signal of his alienation from the former president. His decision on how he would vote was unclear until he sent a private email to GOP senators Saturday morning saying, “While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction.”
He expanded on his rationale on the Senate floor after the roll call vote but went even further, making clear that his enmity toward Trump’s actions.
“There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day,” he said.
McConnell’s decision to acquit Trump left the party locked in its struggle to define itself in the post-Trump presidency. Numerous and fiercely loyal pro-Trump Republicans and more traditional Republicans who believe the former president is damaging the party’s national appeal are struggling to decide the GOP’s direction.
A guilty vote by McConnell
would have likely done even more to roil GOP waters by signaling an attempt by the party’s most powerful Washington leader to yank the party away from a figure still revered by most of its voters.
Many had expected the Kentucky senator to vote to clear Trump of the charges, based on McConnell’s history as a GOP loyalist who takes few major risks. But before Saturday, he had said little in public or private about his mindset, and no one was certain what he would decide.
McConnell jarred the political world just minutes after the Democratic-led House impeached Trump on Jan. 13, writing to his GOP colleagues that he had “not made a final decision” about how he would vote at the Senate trial.
McConnell had also told associates he thought Trump perpetrated impeachable offenses and saw the moment as a chance to distance the GOP from the damage the tumultuous Trump could inflict on it, a Republican strategist told Associated Press at the time, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
But since this week’s trial began, McConnell has voted with a majority of Republicans against proceeding with the trial on the grounds that Trump was no longer president.
Over 36 years in the Senate, the measured McConnell has earned a reputation for inexpressiveness in the service of caution. The suspense over how he was going to vote underscored how much is at stake for McConnell and his party.
McConnell has spent the trial’s first week in his seat in the Senate chamber, staring straight ahead.
A guilty vote by McConnell would have enraged many of the 74 million voters who backed Trump in November, a record for a GOP presidential candidate. That could expose Republican senators seeking reelection in 2022 to primaries from conservatives seeking revenge, potentially giving the GOP less appealing general election candidates as they try winning Senate control.
McConnell’s decision will no doubt color his legacy. He turns 79 next Saturday and doesn’t face reelection for almost six years. Even critics say McConnell likes to play the long game.
McConnell maneuvered through Trump’s four years in office like a captain steering a ship through a rocky strait on stormy seas. Battered at times by vindictive presidential tweets, McConnell made a habit of saying nothing about many of Trump’s outrageous comments.
He ended up guiding the Senate to victories such as the 2017 tax cuts and the confirmations of three Supreme Court justices and more than 200 other federal judges.
Their relationship plummeted after Trump’s denial of his Nov. 3 defeat and relentless efforts to reverse the voters’ verdict with his baseless claims that Democrats fraudulently stole the election.
It withered completely last month, after Republicans lost Senate control with two Georgia runoff defeats they blamed on Trump, and the savage attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. The day of the riot, McConnell railed against “thugs, mobs, or threats” and described the attack as “this failed insurrection.”
A week later, the Democratic-controlled House impeached Trump for inciting insurrection. Six days after that, McConnell said, “The mob was fed lies,” and added, “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
The notecards poking from bouquets rushing out of a Chicago florist all carry similar messages: “looking forward to celebrating in person.”
“The notes aren’t sad,” said Kate Prince, a co-owner of Flora Chicago on the city’s North Side. “They’re hopeful.”
On this Valentine’s Day, Americans are searching for ways to celebrate love amid so much heartache and isolation as the coronavirus pandemic stretches past its year anniversary. Some are clinging to hope, seen in the most vulnerable and frontline workers getting vaccinated, in loosening restrictions on restaurants in the hardest hit places, in case numbers starting to wane. But the death toll is still climbing toward 500,000 dead in the United States and many remain shuttered in their homes.
Prince said florists are scrambling to keep up with the onslaught of orders from people trying to send their love from a safe distance.
“We are crushed,” she said.
Phones are ringing off the hook at restaurants in cities that have loosened restrictions on indoor dining just in time for Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest days of the year for many eateries that have been devastated by shutdowns designed to slow the spread of the virus.
In Chicago, the mayor loosened up indoor dining restrictions last week. After limiting restaurants to 25% capacity and 25 people per room, restaurants now must remain at 25% but they can serve as many as 50 per room.
The Darling restaurant is fully booked for this weekend and has been for weeks.
Sophie Huterstein, the restaurant’s owner, said COVID-19 has allowed the 2-year-old eatery to accomplish the impossible: make people happy to agree to a 4 p.m. reservation.
“People are being very flexible,” she said.
They are also this Valentine’s Day willing to do something else over a weekend where the high temperature will reach the teens and the low will plummet well below zero.
“We have 14 greenhouses and people are coming out in full ski gear,” she said.
In New York City, the America Bar restaurant in the West Village is also fully booked for Valentine’s Day with a long waiting list and high demand for the newly allowed 25% capacity for indoor tables, said David Rabin, a partner in the eatery. More seats, along with the governor’s decision to allow closing times to move from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., has allowed him to give more shifts to his workers.
“For us, it’s a welcome gift,” he said. “It’s been great.”
T Bar NYC Steak and Lounge on the Upper East Side is also fully booked. Owner Tony Fortuna says some of his customers won’t dine indoors and he understands, but for those that have been clamoring to get back to restaurant dining, 25% is a good start. It gives people a glimmer of normalcy at a heartbreaking time.
“It gets everybody motivated, we see a little bit of
hope,” he said. “It’s all about perception: you see people going out and moving around it makes everybody feel in a different mood.”
In Portland, a couple married 55 years has special Valentine’s Day plans.
Gil and Mercy Galicia have barely left their home in almost a year since lockdowns began, said their daughter, Cris Charbonneau. They had seen their close-knit family, three children and six grandchildren spread across the country.
Like many seniors, the year has been especially hard on them. They immigrated from the Philippines in the 1960s and have lived
in their home on a half-acre plot for more than 40 years. Mercy, 80, is a cancer survivor and has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Gil, 88, used to go on daily walks at the mall to stay active, but he hasn’t for a year. He is fearful that the isolation has set them back, and he doesn’t know how much longer they can manage living on their own.
“We’re losing years, COVID has stolen this time that’s so precious,” Charbonneau said.
They don’t have a computer. When the vaccine became available, Gil called everywhere and couldn’t get
through. Charbonneau was on a video call with them Thursday and saw a tweet from a local news station that the grocery store near their home had opened appointments online.
She was scrambling to get two appointments. She wasn’t paying attention to the date. She told them she’d booked them for Sunday, Feb. 14.
“That’s Valentine’s Day!” her father exclaimed and smiled at his wife.
“What a great way to celebrate my love for you.”
They hung up. Their daughter wept.
“That’s what we needed,” she said, “some hope.”