Charlotte, NC — Mainstream media outlets went into a frenzy on Wednesday and Thursday attacking President Trump and his administration for a failed coronavirus vaccine distribution. It followed pointed accusations by Joe Biden that President Trump has failed the American people in distributing the coronavirus vaccine. Biden then followed the statement with a promise to vaccinate 100 million people in the first 100 days of his administration.
As always with the left, we have to take a closer look at the actual details and we can quickly see that they are telling lies.
The first coronavirus vaccine was only approved just 3 weeks ago. Since that time, over 3 million Americans have been vaccinated according to Bloomberg News. That equates to just under 1% of the US population, which is estimated to be just under 331 million people.
Currently, the vaccine is only approved for those 16 years old and over according to the CDC. Based on Census estimates, that would easily eliminate 10% of the US population from qualifying for the vaccine. Plus, only 60% of those eligible have said that they are interested in receiving the vaccine.
This means that there really are only 178 million people that are likely to get the vaccine in the first place. Currently, the US has been vaccinating around 1 million per week, but that total will rise significantly as the first shipments of the Moderna vaccine are reaching rural areas in the past week.
According to Bloomberg, the shots have been distributed, but only 25% have been administered. As a reminder, the states are responsible for the administration of the vaccine, the federal government is only responsible for acquisition and distribution. That’s where the misinformation from the mainstream media begins.
It’s difficult to place the blame for this on the Trump administration for a failure to vaccinate. These issues are at the state level, where the vaccine is being left out to spoil or being prioritized for drug addicts. This is not President Trump’s fault or his administration’s fault.
There is also the case of the significant lag between the time the shots are administered and data being reported. The last update from the CDC was at 9 am on Wednesday morning. A lot of vaccines have been given since that time.
The only country that has vaccinated more people than the United States is China, which started vaccinating in November and currently sits at 4.5 million vaccinations according to the Bloomberg article. China started vaccinating before it had evaluated phase 3 clinical data.
Another issue to consider is the supply chain and the purchases of the COVID vaccine. The United States purchased 200 million doses of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. In a Pfizer announcement, it was said that 100 million of those were to be delivered in the second quarter of 2021. The US was expecting to deliver 20 million doses to the states in the first month of the deliveries.
Both companies said they only intended to ship 70 million doses of the vaccine worldwide by the end of the year. The US will only receive a fraction of those, as will be the case with the expected production in 2021. All of these issues combined have made the COVID vaccine distribution a slow process.
I have never once claimed that President Trump or his administration is absolutely perfect. They have laid the groundwork to obtain and distribute the vaccines to the states, just like the federal government should have done. Trump and his team did not fail in the distribution of the vaccine, the states did.
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JD Washington is the Editor-in-Chief at The Liberty Loft and host of The JD Washington Show. Be sure to subscribe to The Liberty Loft’s daily newsletter. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating to support The Liberty Loft so we can continue to deliver great content.
