Edited by Fern Sidman
Since the official “roll out” of the Covid-19 vaccine by several pharmaceutical companies, early in December of this year, the efficient distribution of the vaccine has encountered numerous problems, especially in New York City.
In early December, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said of the vaccine: “This is the weapon that wins the COVID war, and we have to get serious about this. The distribution is a massive undertaking by government and we have to be able to get the black and brown communities, and poor communities. There is no justification not to have a very aggressive outreach program for the black and brown community, but government is going to have to do its part.”
On December 9, Cuomo said: “People are also going to have to do their part, they are going to have to accept this vaccine. You can’t get to 75% if 50% say they won’t take it. I would never ask anyone in the state to take a vaccine that I was unwilling to take myself. I’m not asking you to send your child to school if I wouldn’t send my child to school.
He added, “Our state priority: Nursing home residents first, nursing home staff, then you go to high risk hospital workers. We have about 700,000 hospital workers in this state, so we prioritize the high-risk population. We have rules that we will establish that we will send to hospitals about what is deemed ‘high risk.’”
The governor also said that essential workers would follow high-risk health care groups, and then lastly, general population. He then announced a partnership with CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate nursing home residents, much like is done with the flu vaccine.
On December 31st, it was reported that New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio said in a New Year’s Eve pledge that one million New York City residents will receive the Covid vaccine in January. “We’re going to vaccinate 1 million New Yorkers in January,” the mayor told CNN.
The New York Post reported that De Blasio also said the city is working closely with Cuomo and state health officials, who set up the criteria on who gets offered the vaccine and when.
“New York City can do this at a record pace,” he said. “Give us the vaccine, we’ll make it happen.”
The Post also reported that the number of complaints has dramatically increased about the slow pace of vaccine administration, both in New York and on a national scale.
One would think that among first responders who should be getting the vaccine almost immediately would be New York City police officers. According to the Post report, the rollout of vaccine distribution to cops was delayed, yet the same report indicates that Cuomo said that recovering drug addicts will get vaccinated as well as congressional staffers.
The fact remains that vaccine distribution has become a chaotic situation in the Big Apple and the entire state for that matter. The worst part is that no one is taking responsibility for the snail’s pace of the vaccine distribution, nor are they doing anything tangible to speed up the process.
The New York Times reported that prior to the vaccine hitting the market, some seasoned doctors and public health experts warned that its distribution would be “a logistical nightmare.”
The Times report said that “dozens of states say they didn’t receive nearly the number of promised doses. Pfizer says millions of doses sat in its store rooms, because no one from President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed told them where to ship them. A number of states have few sites that can handle the ultracold storage required for the Pfizer product, so, for example, front line workers in Georgia have had to travel 40 minutes to get a shot. At some hospitals, residents treating Covid patients protested that they had not received the vaccine while administrators did, even though they work from home and don’t treat patients.”
These sorts of logistical problems in clinics across the country have put the campaign to vaccinate the United States against Covid-19 far behind schedule in its third week, raising fears about how quickly the country will be able to tame the epidemic, according to the Times report.
Moreover, more than 14 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had been sent out across the United States, federal officials said on Wednesday. But, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 2.8 million people have received their first dose, according to the report.
The NY Times report also state that “states have held back doses to be given out to their nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities, an effort that is just gearing up and expected to take several months. Across the country, just 8 percent of the doses distributed for use in these facilities have been administered, with two million yet to be given.”
On Tuesday, President Trump tweeted that it was “up to the States to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the Federal Government.”
The Times reported that Michael Pratt, a spokesman for Operation Warp Speed, said that there will always be lags between the number of doses that have been allocated, shipped, injected and reported. “We’re working to make those lags as small as possible,” he said.
In yet another NY Times report about the lackluster rollout of the vaccine, it noted that in 1947, yet another dangerous outbreak of smallpox has occurred. Despite the fact that a vaccine had already been developed that successfully fought off smallpox, which was known as the scourge of civilizations, immunity for life was not guaranteed.
Smallpox had plagued humankind for thousands of years. According to the World Health Organization, it claimed the lives of 300 million people in the 20th century alone, as was reported by the NY Times.
After patient zero, 47-year-old American businessman, Eugene Le Bar, arrived in New York after a long bus ride from Mexico City just before Easter in 1947 with symptoms of smallpox and eventually died of it, action was needed immediately.
The person who stepped up to the plate was the city’s health commissioner in 1947. Dr. Israel Weinstein, originally from New York’s Lower East Side, knew that there was not a moment to lose.
As reported in the Times he “held a news conference, urging all city dwellers to get vaccinated immediately, even if they had been inoculated as children. Re-vaccinations were necessary, he said, in case people had lost their immunity.”
In a series of daily radio addresses, the Times reported, “Dr. Weinstein focused on transparency and a consistent message. The vaccine, he said, was free, and there was, in his words, “absolutely no excuse for anyone to remain unprotected.” In a calm, clear voice, he promoted the rallying cry that would appear on posters throughout the city: “Be Sure. Be Safe. Get Vaccinated!”
Even though New York City lacked a sufficient amount of vaccine doses to administer to its 7.8 million population, Dr. Weinstein “secured 250,000 units of vaccine from the naval medical supply depot in Brooklyn with the full cooperation of New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer. The Times also reported that he had “780,000 doses flown in from military bases in California and Missouri. He purchased an additional two million from private manufacturers, and then he ordered more.”
In 1947, however, the public’s view of medical practitioners and medical advances in general were not as scrutinized as they are today. People in 2021 are more suspicious and untrusting of vaccines and medical statements from government officials. The vaccine rollout in 1947 was remarkably swift and uncomplicated, and it’s one that almost certainly couldn’t happen today, according to the Times report.
Dr. Weinstein was a public megaphone of sorts, as was reported by the Times, and people listened. He was able to ward off the spread of smallpox in the ten weeks that passed since the death of Eugene Le Bar through his consistent message to New Yorkers that their lives can be saved with this vaccine. And New Yorkers responded by lining up to get the vaccine.
Can the city come close to what it accomplished 73 years ago? This is the question that remains to be answered.
