Start of a long road

 Vaccines to prevent disease from SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19, are being administered at a slow but increasing pace in the United States. As of 6 February, over 59 million doses of vaccine have been distributed and about 66%, a little over 39 million of that number, have been administered. The trendline for vaccine administration remains rising and the 6th of February marked the first day that more than 2 million doses were administered. Because the approach taken by the Trump administration regarding vaccination ended with delivery of vaccine to each state, the struggle for the almost 2 months of how to get vaccine into arms has fallen to local and state governments which were already severely impacted by the pandemic. While we are doing better than at  the start, we need faster administration into the arms of people to protect them and blunt Covid-19 transmission.

Joe Biden’s administration hit the ground running on January 20th. His Covid Response Team worked for months to develop plans to deal with the pandemic. The cooperation from the Trump administration was nil. However, on 21 January, the White House released a 200-page National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. This is a roadmap for dealing with the pandemic, a necessary step for economic recovery. At last there is federal leadership for what is truly both a national and a global problem.

Vaccinations are a key part of the response. As of today, there are multiple sites in Los Angeles County that are vaccinating people. These include sites of various sizes, including the largest mass vaccination site in the U.S. at Dodger Stadium. But there are still many kinks in this system to overcome. The first is having enough vaccine available. Simply put, demand exceeds current supply. Again, it seems as though the Trump administration overpromised and underdelivered on vaccine supply. Among other things, the vaccine reserve was already exhausted when then HHS Secretary Alex Azar disingenuously promised its release. I realize I will sound like a broken record, but this was another of the myriad of lies fed to the American public over the four years of the most incompetent President ever. Fortunately he is now former President Trump.

Later this month, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen will present its Phase 3 trial results to the FDA. The findings are quite hopeful that this will be swiftly approved and allow more rapid vaccinations to occur. Although early findings suggest it is less efficacious than the Pfizer-BionTech or the Moderna vaccines, it is highly protective against severe Covid-19 disease, hospitalizations, and death. It is more important to vaccinate everyone quickly, because that will prevent circulation of Covid-19. This not only reduces morbidity and mortality, it reduces replication of SARS-CoV-2 which is necessary to diminish the emergence of mutant variants which may complicate control of the pandemic.

And a final point today. One week ago the Dodger Stadium mass vaccination site was temporarily shut down by an anti-vaxxer protest. While the World Health Organization and other organizations now prefer to use the term vaccine hesitancy this was truly an anti-vaxxer group, planned on social media and conducted by the usual lunatics. No arrests were made on the day of the protest (a bet: had they been Black Lives Matter protesters, there would have been buses to haul the protesters off). The Los Angeles Police Department said they will not make that mistake again. I say bravo because the stakes are too high to allow the crazies to interfere with a critical public evolution. We were able to get rid of the crazies in the White House at the last election. We have to throw out the crazies currently in the House, Senate, and in state legislatures to return our country to a sane path. And on that note, I end for today.