When people like @friedberg talk about a war-time effort with vaccinations and the public/private partnership that is needed. Here is the good news...

It can be done!

A thread from history...

FDR delivered a speech in 1940 heading into WWII. His most important of all the great speeches he delivered entitled, The Arsenal of Democracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_of_Democracy

The slogan became shorthand for the collective efforts of American industry in partnership with the government to support the Allies during the war. Let's go through two examples...

The US entered WWII and Roosevelt asked Ford to shut down Model A production to focus on building the Jeep and finalizing Sherman Tanks.

Remember, Ford hated FDR and many consider him a Nazi-sympathizer but he complied because it was the right thing to do for his country

Ford accepted Roosevelt’s request and pivoted his operations. Ford plant were converted to make tens of thousands of the iconic Jeep.

The Jeep was a brilliant design that could be modularized and broken down in a way that it could ship in standard sized crates. It then could be quickly snapped together on another continent.

(Imagine all the creative ways we could distribute vaccines!)

And it wasn't just Ford employees... Everyone chipped in...

Here is a factory in Richmond, CA (Now the Craneway Pavilion). As you can see many of the workers could have been the grandmothers or great grandmothers of those of us here today.

The rapid Jeep production and shipping allowed the US to blanket Europe with cars and created a strategic advantage for the Allies in troop mobility It is said the Germans were quoted as saying “the Americans are everywhere” in response to seeing the Jeeps around the continent.

Jeeps became so common around European battlefields that German troops were convinced every American soldier was issued his own and General Dwight D. Eisenhower listed it among the three primary tools that won the war: the Jeep, the Dakota, and the Landing Craft.

Side note: German automakers largely turned their nose up to Ford. Thinking of him as a hacker and not building finely crafted automobiles.

Hitler and his team knew that Ford’s low-end entrant was most likely on to something. Hitler commissioned Ferdinand Porsche to build “the people’s car” in response to Ford. This would eventually become The Beetle and the founding of Volkswagen

Now let's talk about ships. This was a World War after all and jeeps can't drive across oceans...

After the government first dismissed Henry Kaiser's request to help, given he was just some construction entrepreneur, they ended up enlisting his help in building ships.

Kaiser, who had never built ships before, took a first-principles approach, understanding he had a deep water port, access to labor and steel and an innovative way of building things fast by learning from Ford’s assembly line.

One of Kasier’s biggest innovations he took from Ford’s assembly line was moving off of rivets and using a welding technique that allowed them to build ships much faster.

At its peak the Kaiser Shipyards could build a prefabricated ship in 7.5 days. An assembly speed record that still stands today! Over the course of the war they built and shipped over 1,000 vessels

Kaiser and all the industrial work brought jobs for POC and women to CA. At this time the Fair Employment Practice Committee was created "banning discriminatory employment practices by Federal agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war-related work".

Conclusion:

- The public and private must work together
- Perfect is the enemy of good enough
- Take your most talented and challenge them
- Great externalities can come from these efforts that our children will build on

We can do this and we will be better for it!