Without question, Joe Biden needs to dedicate his first days as president to getting out as much vaccine as possible. The slowdown in the federal pipeline — just when states and local governments are ramping up their efforts — is a true nightmare.
Mayor de Blasio reports that New York City is getting just 53,000 new doses this week, leaving it with just 116,000 until more (How much? Who knows?) comes in next week.
That’s after the city did more than 220,000 jabs last week; the total in this first month is just over 455,000 shots.
It’s not remotely clear how or why deliveries have slowed, but it seems to be a national problem. That suggests Team Trump’s confident talk about supplies was ill-founded.
This mess has huge costs: The city’s two mass-vax sites, the Javits Center and the Brooklyn Army Terminal, were already slowing down Tuesday. We’re looking at not just canceled appointments, but needless additional deaths — and lockdowns that will go on longer, with all their brutal economic costs.
Biden’s team needs to put clearing up this mess — both the seemingly jammed-up logistics and the poor communications — ahead of all other policy goals.
Nothing else in America can go ahead smoothly until the vaccines are flowing fast.
