Everyone reading this would know one simple truth. A brilliant and effective vaccine that is sitting in a warehouse is akin to having no vaccine at all. With respect to the actual government, getting the vaccine delivered is far more important than its development. Private companies “discover” vaccines, but in an acute emergency, the government delivers them. Another thing everyone knows? is that in an emergency a good plan today is better than the perfect plan 90 days from today.
It sounds unbelievably complicated and overwhelming, getting doses from production plant warehouses to every little town across the country. Overwhelming. How does one do it?
We do not know, but that wouldn’t stop us because the first thing we’d do is find a lot of people that do know. Insert most any of us in the presidency and on October 1st we would’ve called a meeting with the CEOs of Amazon, FedEx, and UPS and said: “We are going to pay you unbelievable amounts to get this done, with big bonuses for deadlines met ahead of time, government support to hire extra workers, and access to military fleets and personnel. You are to use your software, delivery plans, airline network, and personnel to move this vaccine the moment a batch is available. You will do it voluntarily and be handsomely rewarded, or I will use the Defense Production Act to order you to do it and maybe you won’t be as handsomely rewarded.” And leave the meeting to do something else urgent.
It is not hard to form a “plan” when you have access to people who plan the exact same thing every day. And yet the Trump administration, the “business people,” as Jared always bragged, they couldn’t even come up with “that” plan. They didn’t have a plan. Let’s repeat this, they didn’t have any plan. At. All. From C&L [1]:
But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CN oneN of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.
“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said. Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”
It sounds shocking at first and on second thought becomes obvious, we all know why. The election took place on November 3rd. Under no circumstances would there be a vaccine to be delivered by November 3rd. Throughout the entire fall and into winter, up until January 6th and eventually the 20th, the only thing that Jared and Don cared about was getting a second term. That is it. No delivery plan could help them politically and thus there is no delivery plan.
It is that simple and that jaw-dropping.
So, as we watch those numbers crawl up on the side chyron on the news (as we write, it says 407,454), just know, each death, every single digit, represents someone that didn’t matter to the Trump administration after that person voted.
It is that simple. It’s that horrific. “American carnage” was the beginning and bookend.
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak