[Goose]

This draft plan for California seems like, well, a draft.




I have a lot more confidence that the vaccines will get to the states promptly than I have confidence that the states, or at least California, will be able to distribute it in an orderly fashion.

Me too. The fact we are at the "draft plan" stage right now is very worrying. Even after the plan is in final stages, you need to run through it completely and at scale to be sure it can be executed. Sometimes the initial plan works perfectly, sometimes it is a disaster, and most times it is in between. I also agree the press will jump on every problem and make them bigger news than they should be. We really don't need that right now with all the previous problems we have had recently.

That said, we also need to get these vaccines distributed as widely as possible as quickly as possible. Some of the problems in distribution can be "real enough" to cost time in fixing them, and that is what we don't want. That is why "planning overkill" should have been present. We had no vaccines in July. We should have been doing this planning then, not now. Yes, there would have been lots of contingencies that would need to be addressed because we didn't know which vaccines we would get and in what time frame. We had the opportunity and the time to work through all the possibilities well in advance. It appears we haven't done so. Draft plans at this point are unacceptable IMHO.

While I have some concerns about "fairness" (whatever one defines that to mean), I am much more interested in the vaccine being distributed in a manner that will reduce the spread of the disease as rapidly as possible. Some workers are a priority for utilitarian reasons. Health Care workers are a case in point. So are police, fire, and the like. We need them to continue their fight against the disease.  LTCF personnel are health care workers and therefore qualify. Residents of LTCFs are a different story. If we could immunize everybody who could infect these residents, then the resident's themselves won't be at risk. However, we probably can't reliably do that and residents of LTCFs spread the disease rapidly inside the facility because there is no way to isolate them from each other. Arguably, they are a major "spreader", although in a smaller group. For that reason, I can understand making them relatively high priority.

After that point, I would suggest that going to the geographic communities with the highest concentration of cases is for sure the best way to reduce spread. The people who interface with the public and are most at risk will thereby get the vaccine early on by "natural selection". Some people will cheat and cross boundaries to get the vaccine, and we need to minimize that, but it isn't a catastrophe if they do. Eventually, "everybody" will get it. When we reach the point there aren't any identifiable hot spots, then it may not much matter how we distribute to the remainder of the population. They are all equally at risk.

[Goose]

This draft plan for California seems like, well, a draft.




I have a lot more confidence that the vaccines will get to the states promptly than I have confidence that the states, or at least California, will be able to distribute it in an orderly fashion.

Me too. The fact we are at the "draft plan" stage right now is very worrying. Even after the plan is in final stages, you need to run through it completely and at scale to be sure it can be executed. Sometimes the initial plan works perfectly, sometimes it is a disaster, and most times it is in between. I also agree the press will jump on every problem and make them bigger news than they should be. We really don't need that right now with all the previous problems we have had recently.

That said, we also need to get these vaccines distributed as widely as possible as quickly as possible. Some of the problems in distribution can be "real enough" to cost time in fixing them, and that is what we don't want. That is why "planning overkill" should have been present. We had no vaccines in July. We should have been doing this planning then, not now. Yes, there would have been lots of contingencies that would need to be addressed because we didn't know which vaccines we would get and in what time frame. We had the opportunity and the time to work through all the possibilities well in advance. It appears we haven't done so. Draft plans at this point are unacceptable IMHO.

While I have some concerns about "fairness" (whatever one defines that to mean), I am much more interested in the vaccine being distributed in a manner that will reduce the spread of the disease as rapidly as possible. Some workers are a priority for utilitarian reasons. Health Care workers are a case in point. So are police, fire, and the like. We need them to continue their fight against the disease.  LTCF personnel are health care workers and therefore qualify. Residents of LTCFs are a different story. If we could immunize everybody who could infect these residents, then the resident's themselves won't be at risk. However, we probably can't reliably do that and residents of LTCFs spread the disease rapidly inside the facility because there is no way to isolate them from each other. Arguably, they are a major "spreader", although in a smaller group. For that reason, I can understand making them relatively high priority.

After that point, I would suggest that going to the geographic communities with the highest concentration of cases is for sure the best way to reduce spread. The people who interface with the public and are most at risk will thereby get the vaccine early on by "natural selection". Some people will cheat and cross boundaries to get the vaccine, and we need to minimize that, but it isn't a catastrophe if they do. Eventually, "everybody" will get it. When we reach the point there aren't any identifiable hot spots, then it may not much matter how we distribute to the remainder of the population. They are all equally at risk.