A brief look at country-by-country covid-19 vaccinations is shown the US far ahead of other countries. But dive a little below the surface and the data tells a different story. Although more than 2.1 million people have received their first vaccine against covid-19, more than 9.3 million doses were expected to be shot in American arms, according to data from the Disease control centers. At the current rate, the United States will take a decade to hit the critical vaccine threshold because we safely overcome this mess.
A federal leadership vacuum is leaving Americans unnecessarily exposed to the greatest public health crisis of a century, the effects of which have come before our eyes, with 334,000 Americans dead and hospitals so overwhelmed, some are setting aside ambulances. With such high stakes, there is a collective failure to meet the moment rooted in individualism. conservatism. And IIt is a warning of what awaits us in the coming decades of the climate crisis, unless we act decisively and collectively to prevent ecological collapse.
The deployment of vaccines in the United States has followed a family course in the Trump era of big promises, the failure to deliver on them, and then blame elsewhere. The administration promised vaccinate 20 million Americans at the end of December. We are one day away from the calendar to move to January and 20 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech i Modern vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month are not even distributed, let alone close to getting into people’s arms.
Despite knowing, and with the prospect of these vaccines being approved, little seems to have been done to establish a realistic vaccine launch outside of setting a large, round target. The Republican-controlled Senate did not pass any bills to grant resourceless states the funds needed to distribute them until the end of last week. The bill includes $ 8 billion for states to distribute vaccines, money which have been the states asking since October. Nothing stopped the SenateI am passing this bill, but the majority leader, Mitch McConnell was more committed to his project to reshape the judiciary, confirming Amy Coney Barrett in the Supreme Court, and try to protect companies from coronavirus claims than provide the necessary help.
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The Trump administration has also been absent. The main contribution of the president so far has been to tweet on Tuesday, “It is up to the states to administer. Move on! ”As a kind of abusive animator. Meanwhile, Operation Warp Speed has moved the gates, said Stat News the plan all the time was distribute 20 million doses in late December, although the head of the program said earlier that this was the goal of vaccination.
Creating and implementing a vaccine program is no small feat, and it’s fair to expect some stumbling blocks even with months of delivery time. It is not entirely up to the federal government, and in the coming months we will surely know the failures of the state, to say nothing of the failures of an intensely capitalist society that allows the rich to jump the line (which is is already going through Members of the board of Moderna). But the failure of the richest country on Earth to do so and, in place, moving at a vaccination rate that it would take ten years adequately protect against covid-19 is really failed-state territory.
The Biden administration will have to use all the tools at its disposal to speed up the vaccination rate, reduce unnecessary lives sacrificed, and reduce economic damage. Pgresident elect Biden he has promised so many things, saying he plans to “move heaven and earth to get us going in the right direction.” With the new and more contagious variation of the coronavirus just discovered in Colorado, this effort may not come soon enough.
The parable of the vaccine, like the parable of the previous coronavirus testing and prevention, is the one that highlights the absolute failure of the last four decades to accept Reagan’s view of the federal government. A void government along with a toxic brand of individualism driven by conservative news from Fox News and OANN in Breitbart has left the US unable to do what it is supposed to do. If we ignore the parable as we move forward in the decade of the climate crisis, the results will be catastrophic.
An effective national vaccine program requires a high degree of coordination, experience, money, and strong leadership. But alongside an effective national program to decarbonize all sectors of the economy, it’s like frying an egg compared to preparing a 24-course molecular gastronomy meal. To completely decarbonize the United States at the pace and scale needed to avoid catastrophic levels of warming, it will need to have all facets of government. stretching in the same direction along with trillions of dollars in investment in new infrastructure, a fair transition for fossil fuel workers, increased public transport and more. At the same time that emissions are being reduced, the United States will also have to adapt to the impacts that already exist in the pipeline. Again, this will require long-term thinking, solid supervision and coordination, and amazing sums of money. (The cost of doing nothing is disproportionately higher both in economic terms and in human life, so save me what he will do with the garbage.)
Most importantly, cleaning up the country’s emissions and protecting its citizens will require a sustained effort over several decades until the last tonne of carbon in hard-to-mitigate sectors, such as concrete and aviation, and last community of the Navajo nation. connected to clean energy and the economic opportunities of the 21st century. The Biden administration can start us in this course even without the Senate, but then every president and congress it will have to stay on course or risk American and even global ruin.
All of this will require us to learn from the failures of the American brand of conservative governance that the pandemic has exposed. Instead of a government that focuses on the things that really matter (human well-being, protection against the economic and health impacts of covid-19, fast vaccines), we have one that has shrunk and only cares about protect the profits of companies and members of Congress.
In an instantly iconic campaign announcement earlier this year, Sen. Ed Markey reversed the famous JFK line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country the senator said so: “JoIt’s time to start asking what your country can do for you. “So far, it seems Republicans (and some Democrats) haven’t heard. There is little time left to lose and so many lives lost in both the pandemic and the crisis. climate, it’s time to start asking it a little louder.