State's vaccine rollout is a disaster

“The vaccine rollout has been abysmal.” This is a quote from a doctor buddy of mine. I concur. Health care workers have been first in line, which certainly makes sense. The vaccine doses have been distributed to counties based upon their relative population numbers. However, Oklahoma County has significantly more health care workers per capita than other counties. This means rural counties quickly inoculated their health care workers and moved on to 65-yearolds. In Oklahoma City, I know many seniors who have gone to rural Oklahoma to get their shots, because here we were still vaccinating health care workers. For the first phase, Oklahoma County should have gotten significantly more doses than just based on our proportional population.

Our governor is trying to permanently rescind pro-vaccine rules at the state Health Department. He attempted to nominate a known anti-vaxxer (and anti-masker) to the state Board of Education. He obviously has no clue how to roll out a new vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control's Covid Data Tracker, Oklahoma's seven-day average for daily new cases is now 3,986. The average for daily deaths reported is now 31. According to the Covid Tracking Project, on Jan. 10 we were the No. 1 state in the country for daily new cases per capita. This is indeed a disaster. None of this is surprising, when we do not have a statewide mask mandate and if we have an anti-vaxxer at the helm of our state.

Ervin Yen, M.D., Oklahoma City

Yen, a Republican, has announced he plans to run for governor in 2022.