Where Infections Mushroom, Vaccines Should Too
The Biden Administration could stand to be more flexible.
The Biden Administration has done a great job getting shots in our arms. Since Day One, it has been responsive to the moment, ramping up the production, the delivery, the access, and the promotion of vaccines.
A great job. Until now.
Because now, the administration is not accommodating changing circumstance. Top of the list, we have a worsening Covid crisis in Michigan, but it is mirrored by looming crises in several other states in almost every region of the country. Yet the Biden administration is not moving every mountain to combat them.
In Michigan, they’re now suffering seven times as many Covid cases as they suffered just six weeks ago. Hospitals’ caseloads actually have doubled in the last two weeks. Some once again are running out of beds, others have had to put off elective surgeries. Of the 17 most viral metropolitan surges in the U.S., 16 right now are in Michigan according to The New York Times, which is documenting the most hazardous hotspots in the nation.
The only outlier in the top 17? Peoria, Illinois, which comes in at #9. But also coming on fast are diverse metropolitan areas like Great Falls Montana, Klamath Falls Oregon, Laconia New Hampshire, Minneapolis-St. Paul. If yours isn’t on the list today, it could be tomorrow.
Maybe most alarming is this: the Covid death rate from coast to coast has stopped going down. Experts cite several causes, first among them the more infectious and more deadly virus variants that have swept across the country. In New York City, three-quarters of new coronavirus cases are attributed to variants.
But as important as identifying the cause is identifying the solution.
The administration has made it clear that it believes it is only fair to allot vaccines on a per capita basis, equally distributed to all populations prone to the virus rather than weighted in favor of populations pounded by the crisis. But public officials from the most dangerous places have pled to President Biden for higher allocations for their populations under siege. Republican Congressman Fred Upton and Democrat Debbie Dingell, both from Michigan, last week sent a bipartisan letter to the president: “Today, Michigan reported 7,819 new confirmed COVID-19 cases. The state has also seen a corresponding increase in hospitalizations and deaths in the last month, which are now approaching levels last seen during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2020.”
That’s the month when more than 65,000 Americans died from Covid.
The administration’s response, though, is inflexible. “The answer is not necessarily to give vaccine,” according to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer, and to shut things down.”
But let’s get real. People are fatigued. Whether wise or not, the appetite for a return to the most drastic restrictions of the pandemic has waned. In other words, it’s just not going to happen. I hope citizens will still be as cautious as they can be— it’s in our nation’s interest— but like it or not, that would seem to leave vaccines as our best hope to beat this pandemic.
Which leads to a compelling question: since the virus doesn’t know where one state ends and another begins, why not send more vaccines where they’re most needed?
White House press secretary Jen Psaki had an answer for that this week: “It’s important to understand how we’ve approached vaccine distribution from the beginning. It’s done with equity in mind.” But here’s what’s wrong with Psaki’s explanation: equity isn’t paramount right now. Efficacy is.
After all, if one bedroom in your home is hotter than another, that’s where you move the air conditioner. If one forest fire is more threatening than others, that’s where you concentrate your firefighters. If one city’s riots are worse than another’s, that’s where you send the National Guard. If one patient in a hospital goes critical, that’s where you rush your resources.
So if it’s true that in some states, for whatever reasons, they have more vaccine than they can give away— Mississippi and Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Georgia reportedly are examples— then Psaki’s declaration that “We’re not in a place, nor will we be, where we take supply from one state to give it to another,” contradicts the scope of the crisis.
As does an opinion piece yesterday in The Washington Post by Céline Gounder, a member of President Biden’s Transition Covid-19 Advisory Board. She wrote, “Even if a large proportion of Michigan residents were to be vaccinated today in the middle of the state’s surge, the impact of vaccine-induced immunity wouldn’t be seen until at least a month from now. Vaccinating today won’t help the people being infected right now.”
No it won’t. But it will help the people who might otherwise be infected tomorrow, a week from tomorrow, a month from tomorrow, because one thing on which experts agree is, as more get vaccinated, fewer get infected. And then, there are fewer still to spread the infection.
Isn’t that the whole purpose of the exercise?
The CDC director also said last week of pleas from Michigan and elsewhere, “If we vaccinate today, we will have… impact in six weeks, and we don’t know where the next place is going to be that is going to surge.”
But we do know where it’s surging today.
Basically the administration is telling us, if the pandemic is out of control again in Michigan and Minnesota and Illinois and Pennsylvania and several other places, it’s too late to stop it with more vaccine.
The response to this reasoning is, better late than never.
The Scripps Research Institute’s professor of molecular medicine, Dr. Eric Topol, recently wrote that based on data from Britain and Israel and other countries considered most successful suppressing the pandemic, “With an influx of vaccines, we can stop a spike in cases as soon as it appears… It’s about plasticity, flexibility in responding, in being able to pivot.”
In many ways in its first twelve weeks of life, the Biden administration has been all about flexibility and plasticity. It has been responsive to the moment.
Where life and death are at stake, this is not the time to stop.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his essays also are published— with images— on a website he co-founded, BoomerCafe.com.
I disagree. The experts have this right
The White House needs to read this column!