Trump administration’s lies about vaccine supply hurt California’s effort to save lives

Last week started with some good news in California’s efforts to speed up the vaccination of millions of residents against COVID-19.

A promise of millions of additional doses from the federal government led California and other states around the country to open up the vaccination program to anyone aged 65 and older. It allowed hospitals around the state to begin the process of administering the first doses of the vaccine to all California seniors, with the promise of new vaccine supplies on the way in the coming days.

Turns out it was all a lie. The Trump administration’s promise to release stockpiles of vaccine doses appears to have been yet another falsehood.

Both of the vaccines approved to protect against COVID-19 require a two-shot regimen. When California received its initial distribution of several hundred thousand vaccine doses, hospitals and clinics around the state were holding half of those in reserve to ensure that there was enough to administer second shots to those who had received a first vaccine dose.

That began to change after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that the federal government would begin releasing stockpiles of vaccine doses. In response, California loosened its guidelines and started administering first doses to hundreds of thousands of more people.

Now it appears those promised vaccine doses won’t materialize as scheduled. When Azar made his announcement, the federal stockpiles were already empty according to a report in the Washington Post. Health officials in California and elsewhere who were eagerly anticipating a doubling of our limited vaccine supply must now change course once again.

All of this of course creates mass confusion for those desperate to protect themselves from this deadly disease. Given the behavior of many federal leaders during this pandemic, it’s hard to know whether this is cruelty or incompetence coming from the outgoing administration. Either way, it’s dashing the hopes of millions of seniors around the country and putting their lives in danger.

It’s one final gaslighting of the American people at the hands of an administration that has botched the response to this pandemic at virtually every stage.

This slapstick approach to government is resulting in tragedy. More than 300,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. It’s clear those numbers are as high as they are in part because of gross mismanagement of this crisis and our federal government’s inability to act.

Now it falls to California and other states to pick up the pieces. After days of telling seniors they were eligible to receive the vaccine, the state must once again wrestle with what to do about a supply of vaccine that is far less than what was promised.

Despite the lies and disappointment this week, California was on the right track with the loosening of its vaccine guidance. As soon as we get a clear picture of our vaccine supply, and what we can expect in the coming weeks, California should move swiftly to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

We need clinics statewide — particularly in those communities that have been hardest hit by this pandemic, to ensure a fast, efficient and equitable distribution of this vaccine. We need shots in arms so California can get back to school and back to work. That will become easier with some competent leadership in Washington D.C.

This story was originally published January 18, 2021 at 5:30 AM.