More than two million people have received the first dose of one of the two coronavirus vaccines approved for emergency use. Enough first-doses for 15.7 million people are scheduled for distribution over the next week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest figures show 7.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be en route by the end of this week and 8 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.
The supply will cover almost 5 percent of the country. It’s enough for about three-quarters of the medical workers and nursing home residents and staff, according to Post analysis.
Both vaccines require a follow-up shot three or four weeks after the first dose. Those will be distributed starting early in January. The CDC’s counts include the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, island territories and five federal agencies that are getting their own distributions: Bureau of Prisons, Veterans Affairs, Indian Health Service, State Department and Defense.
Meanwhile, disputes are already arising over who should get the vaccine immediately. Executes at Stanford Health were criticized for putting themselves ahead of front-line workers. And politicians -- from the White House, Congress and governors’ suites around the country -- are getting vaccinated despite not being at the top of the official priority lists.
Following the CDC guidelines, many states are prioritizing health-care workers and nursing home residents and staff members. States are free, however, to set their own vaccination priorities. Some are emphasizing first responders, prison staff members or people who received placebos in completed vaccination studies.
Once there are enough vaccines, the latest CDC guidance recommends adding frontline essential workers (first responders, teachers, day-care staff, grocery store workers and prison guards), and adults 75 and over as the next priority groups. After them, CDC recommends everyone with a preexisting condition such as diabetes, heart problems or obesity, and older adults. These are provisional priority groups from federal study groups. (emphasis added)
One can reasonably wonder if some of the politicians cutting ahead in line are among the radical right GOP crackpots who promoted promoting the spread of the infection by calling the pandemic a hoax or "just" the flu and/or by opposing masks and social distancing. Ah, the stench of fresh politician hypocrisy, GOP flavor.[1]
Each state is listed and its situation discussed. Some of the California discussion is below.
Footnote:
1. As usual, the politicians will bicker, blither and bloviate. For some, their moral compasses are so broken that they do not know if they are showing leadership by example or just garden variety hypocrisy. A different WaPo article commented: "All members of Congress qualify for vaccine priority but disagree on whether this shows leadership by example or special treatment. .... The internal medicine resident at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital watched with frustration last week as inoculations were administered to scores of government leaders — including lawmakers who refused to wear masks and Trump administration officials who minimized the pandemic — while she and her colleagues were initially left unprotected because their hospital had received fewer than 1,000 doses of the scarce resource." (emphasis added)
That smells like GOP hypocrisy to me, even if it is leadership of some sort.
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