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The degree to which the vaccine rollout is broken is mind boggling.
Every few days, I learn about some fresh, novel way to fuck things up. A big part of it has to do with the lack of centralization and relying on a patchwork of private providers, with a patchwork of means for signing up, managing waitlists, and recording shots given.
At some point, there must be a reckoning with the fact that the privatization of the government at every level has left us completely incapable of responding to large-scale crises.
There's been ample evidence of that in the last 20 years when it comes to natural disasters.
There's been ample evidence of that in the last 20 years when it comes to natural disasters.
Now we're seeing it in response to a public health crisis.
There is no one in the government with any experience actually governing or managing a crisis. Everything gets farmed out to the lowest bidder...or the best connected bidder.
There is no one in the government with any experience actually governing or managing a crisis. Everything gets farmed out to the lowest bidder...or the best connected bidder.
We hand gobs of taxpayer dollars off to private actors, and then there's limited effort to coordinate or oversee the efforts of those private actors.
In the last 20 years, the federal government has lost BILLIONS of dollars to fraud and waste in disaster response.
In the last 20 years, the federal government has lost BILLIONS of dollars to fraud and waste in disaster response.
And it's not just the money wasted. These lucrative contracts are for vital and necessary services which must be performed, but which never happen, and often the lapse isn't discovered for months or years after the fact.
Even when services are rendered, they often aren't rendered as efficiently or effectively as they could be with stronger centralized control.
It can make it somewhere between difficult and impossible for people to get the services they need.
It can make it somewhere between difficult and impossible for people to get the services they need.
The COVID vaccine rollout is the perfect example of that. People sign up for one wait list thinking they are signed up everywhere, but in truth, they need to sign up for a patchwork of wait lists. None of these wait lists talk to each other. They rely heavily on digital sign-up.
Because private actors are quickly spinning up ways to facilitate wait list sign-ups and management and to schedule vaccination appointments, they make mistakes. A thing that has happened repeatedly is people being able to game broken sign-ups to "jump the line."
Another example is a major city handing off their largest mass vaccination site and effort to a group of people barely out of college with no experience running such a vaccine site, who screwed up scheduling and tracking doses, then STOLE doses.
Stories like this aren't rare or one-offs. They happen again and again, across virtually every state: shitty waitlist management, shitty, easily manipulated scheduling, shitty dose tracking, and of course, tens of millions of doses of vaccine missing.
This universality of shittiness is the clearest indicator that this isn't a problem due to a small number of bad or hapless actors, but instead a systemic issue that stems from our government's inability to manage resources and processes.
While it's super easy to blame this on the Trump administration, one only needs to look at FEMA response to natural disasters going back to the 90s to see that this absolute inability to manage disasters is a long-standing, cross-administration problem.
Ending the reliance on private companies to respond to crises and bringing disaster management expertise back in-house are vital. Not that this will fix the problem quickly, because currently no one in government actually knows how to do this, due to decades of NOT doing it.
But all privatization has done is lead to bloated costs and timelines, rampant fraud and waste, and horrifically ineffective responses, which not only leads to people losing homes and businesses and the entire erosion of communities, but in many cases results in DEATHS.
Every day that passes without a coordinated plan to distribute the COVID vaccine, more people die.
This has been true of the entire pandemic response, but it's irrefutable when a vaccine that's almost 100% effective against death exists and thousands are still dying daily.
This has been true of the entire pandemic response, but it's irrefutable when a vaccine that's almost 100% effective against death exists and thousands are still dying daily.
Privatization was supposed to lead to a cheaper, leaner government that was more effective at responding to crises.
That experiment failed, resoundingly. We have to change course, or this will keep happening.
That experiment failed, resoundingly. We have to change course, or this will keep happening.
