A cursory glance at country-by-country vaccinations against covid-19 shows the US far ahead of other countries. But dive a little below the surface and the data tells a different story. While more than 2.1 million people received their first covid-19 vaccine shot, more than 9.3 million doses lay waiting to be shot in the Americans, according to figures from the Disease Control Centers. At the current rate, the US will last a decade to hit the critical vaccination threshold for us to move safely past this mess.
A vacuum of federal leadership let Americans be unnecessarily exposed to the biggest public health crisis in a century, the consequences of which played out right before our eyes, with 334,000 Americans dead and hospitals so overwhelmed, some are ambulances turn away. With interests so high, there is a collective failure to meet the moment rooted in individualism conservatism. And IThis is a warning for what awaits us in the coming decades of the climate crisis, unless we act decisively and collectively to prevent the ecological collapse.
The explosion of vaccines in the US followed a well-known career in the Trump era of big promises, the failure to keep them and then throwing the blame elsewhere. The administration has promised to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of December. We are a day away from the calendar moving to January and 20 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech and Modern vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month are not even being distributed, let alone from people’s arms.
Despite knowing that, and the prospect of vaccines being approved has apparently been little done to set up a realistic deployment of vaccines beyond a large, round number target. The Republican-controlled Senate has not passed a bill to give the cash-strapped states the funds to hand it out by the end of last week. The relief bill includes $ 8 billion for states to distribute vaccines, money that states have been ask for since October. Nothing stopped the SenateI accept this bill, but the leader of the majority, Mitch McConnell was more committed to his project to reform the judiciary, Amy Coney Barrett confirmed before the Supreme Court, and to try to protect businesses from coronavirus lawsuits rather than provide the necessary assistance.
G / O Media can get a commission
The Trump administration was also absent. The president’s main contribution so far has been tweet on Tuesday, “It is up to the states to administer. Get started! ”Like a kind of abusive cheerleader. Meanwhile, Operation Warp Speed has moved the goalposts, told Stat News the whole time the plan was to spread By December 20, 20 million doses despite the head of the program saying earlier that it was the vaccination target.
Setting up and implementing a vaccination program is no small feat, and it is reasonable to expect obstacles even with months of progress. It does not depend entirely on the federal government, and in the coming months we will surely learn about failures by the state, to say nothing of the failures of an intensely capitalist society that makes the rich streak (something that happens already for Modern’s board members). But the failure of the richest country on earth to do so, and instead, moves at a vaccination rate that would take ten years to 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 the unnecessary lives sacrificed, and reduce the economic damage. President-selected Biden promised so much and said he intends to ‘move heaven and earth to move us in the right direction’. With the new, more contagious variation of the coronavirus just discovered in Colorado, that attempt cannot come soon enough.
The parable of the vaccine – as well as the parable of the coronavirus testing and prevention – is one that exposes the overall failure of the past four plus decades of accepting the federal government’s Reagan view. A hollowed out government coupled with a toxic brand of individualism driven by conservative Fox News news to OANN to Breitbart did not enable the US to do what he had to do. If we do not heed the parable as we enter the decade of the climate crisis, the results will be be catastrophic.
An effective national vaccination program requires a high degree of coordination, expertise, money and strong leadership. But besides an effective national program to carbon-free every sector of the economy, it’s like frying an egg compared to preparing a 24-course molecular gastronomy meal. To give the U.S. full carbon at the rate and scale needed to prevent catastrophic levels of warming, every facet of government is needed pull together in the same direction along with trillions of dollars in investments in new infrastructure, a fair transition for fossil fuel workers, has increased public transportation, and more. Simultaneously with the reduction of emissions, the US will also have to adapt to the consequences that are already in the pipeline. This in turn will require long-term thinking, strong oversight and coordination and staggering amounts of money. (The cost of doing nothing is exorbitantly higher in terms of economy and human life, so save me the big how we will use the garbage.)
More importantly, clearing the country’s emissions and protecting its citizens will have to be a sustained effort over several decades until the last tonne of carbon from difficult industries such as concrete and aviation is reduced and the last community in the Navajo Nation is linked to clean power and the economic opportunities of the 21st century. The government of Biden can start us on this course, even without the Senate, but after that every president and Congress will have to stay that way or risk the American – and even global – downfall.
All of this we will have to learn from the failures of the US Conservative government that exposed the pandemic. Instead of a government that focuses on the things that really matter – human well-being, health protection and economic consequences of covid-19, rapid vaccinations – we have one that has shrunk and only cares about protecting corporate profits and members of Congress itself.
In an immediate iconic campaign announcement earlier this year, Senator Ed Markey reversed the famous JFK series, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. ‘Instead, the senator put it this way: “IIt’s time to start asking what your country can do for you. So far, Republicans (and some Democrats) have not heard of it. With little time left and so many lives lost due to the pandemic and climate crisis, it’s time to ask it a little harder.