I just hit publish on this, but I am quite proud of this edition of my newsletter.

I look at vaccine distribution and some of the challenges it is facing.

I love logistics stories and the problems that people solve when they need to solve problems. https://polimath.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-and-the-last-mile

The "last mile" problem is a big one. I'm probably even simplifying it beyond recognition here.

Companies spend billions on solving the last mile problem.

Vaccines have the last mile problem, but there are many many more variables that we have to grapple with.

That means trade-offs need to be made.

I don't think we're doing that badly in vaccine administration. I see people complaining that we aren't hitting certain goals but it's not clear to me that those original metrics were realistic metrics in the first place

Yes, I want vaccinations as fast as humanly possible... but everyone wants that! And from what I can see there is no villain here who is wasting vaccines or trying to slow anything down.

We've got a big logistics problem and we're all working on it.