An emergency looms. Trump acts decisively to deploy excuses!

As you probably know already, despite the administration’s promises just a few weeks ago to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of December, probably no more than 3 million actually were vaccinated. What’s really ironic is that, after doing so good a job getting the vaccine(s) developed and tested in record time, and despite Pfizer’s having already manufactured and shipped more than 11 million doses, it seems we’re all dressed up with nowhere to go. Leanna Wen of WaPo estimated that, at the current rate of vaccination, it will be ten years before 80% of the population (which is the current estimate of what’s needed to achieve herd immunity) has been immunized with two doses.

There seem to be two main problems causing this:

1.      Millions of doses are sitting in Pfizer’s warehouses, as Pfizer waits to be told where to ship them.

2.      Once at their destination, they’re not getting injected.

But don’t worry, there’s no shortage of excuses from this administration! Here are some of the more interesting ones I’ve heard or read:

1.      Pfizer hasn’t shipped the doses they say they have. One official made this complaint on NPR. After the reporter pointed out that Pfizer says they’ve shipped them, the official said something like “Well, if they have, we haven’t seen them.” That seemed to be the end of the story for him. If I were the reporter, I would have asked “Did it ever occur to you that you might pick up the phone and find out where they are?”

2.      There have been delays due to the holidays, winter weather, etc. Of course, I have total sympathy with whoever gives these excuses. After all, who could have possibly known in advance that there were holidays in December, or that the weather can sometimes be bad?

3.      We did our job. From here on, it’s up to the states and local governments. Of course, this has been the attitude of the Trump administration from early on in the pandemic (after Trump went through a brief stage of saying he had everything under control and all the problems would be fixed right away. That lasted about a week): The real responsibility lies with the states.

This last excuse is probably the root of the problems. This excuse falls down on two counts:

a.      The states have known for a long time that it’s up to them to get things done as much as they can, since the administration takes no responsibility for anything having to do with the pandemic. But it doesn’t seem like anyone from Washington has even tried to coordinate with the states: suggest for them the right protocols to follow, ask if there is anything they need (other than a facemask mandate, of course), etc. It’s simply amazing that they did all this wonderful planning (led by a general, no less!) that is probably doing a great job of getting the virus to the different states. But literally nobody seems to have even asked, “Hey, what are the states going to do after they sign the delivery receipt? Are they going to be able to inject the vaccines quickly and efficiently?” This is incredible.

b.      The healthcare system is overloaded as it is. Expecting the doctors and nurses to stop trying to save lives and just administer vaccines is clearly wrong. State officials have been saying for months that they need a lot more funds for this effort. So we have the strange situation in which the administration spent $24 billion on Operation Warp Speed but allocated only a few hundred million to the states to put the vaccines in people’s arms. Of course they can’t perform miracles. And of course, Mitch McConnell wouldn’t let the relief bill pass until two weeks ago. It has $9 billion for vaccine assistance for the states, but they should have had that months ago. As a result, lots of people will die who didn’t need to.

It would be nice to think that these problems will all go away on January 20. Unfortunately, they’re just another example of the deep hole that Trump has dug for Biden. MAGA!

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). The projections are based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 5.1%.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
Month of March	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan.	83,095	2,680	104%
Total 2020 & 2021	437,310	1,294

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 354,215

Deaths yesterday: 3,438

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 5.1% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 20,445,654

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 228,413

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 7.0%  

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 12,129,680

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 354,215

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 2.8%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March.

IV. 7-day average of test positive rate for US: 11.7%

For comparison, the previous peak for this rate was 7.8% in late July, although the peak in early April was 22%. The rate got down to 4.0% in early October but has been climbing most of the time since then. This is published by Johns Hopkins.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.