Shots Into Arms, Now
At the outset of World War II, America lost access to the world’s supply of natural rubber. Synthetic rubber had existed in the periphery for a few years, but had minimal market share in the United States. The US had a one million ton stockpile of rubber, consumed six hundred thousand tons per year in a pre-war economy, and had no process to produce synthetic rubber at scale. To solve the crisis, FDR created a federal Rubber Reserve Company, and under its purview in December of 1941, the four biggest rubber companies signed onto a joint patent and information-sharing agreement.
A team of academics then created a commission to determine the best process for scaling up the project. In just a few weeks, they delivered a report that detailed instructions for the establishment of a rubber director and an operational framework for the necessary factories and manufacturing infrastructure. The government directed the construction of fifty one plants nationwide in partnership with the companies. Firestone produced its first batch of synthetic rubber in April of 1942. Goodyear came in May, US Rubber in September, and Goodrich in November. By the end of the year, they had collectively produced over two thousand tons of synthetic rubber after never having done so before. By the end of the war, these four corporations nearly produced America’s entire previous one million ton stockpile of rubber on an annual basis. In 1955, the government sold the rubber plants into private hands, and now, rubber is a hundred billion dollar industry.
Today, America is once again at war. The coronavirus has killed roughly a similar number of its citizens to those perished during World War II. With Operation Warp Speed, one could argue an analogous response has occurred. There was a similar partnership between the public and private sectors that developed several vaccines in record time. The scientific community has done its job remarkably well, just like it did in 1942. But rubber did not magically make its way from these brand new factories into American products and machines. There was a well-defined, elaborate, centralized and consistent plan to ensure it was effectively distributed to the places that faced deficiencies. Today, there is nothing of the sort.
In Florida, senior citizens are sleeping in their cars as lines pile up over three miles long for the vaccine. At Stanford, an algorithm meant to maximize distribution efficiency ended up prioritizing executive staff who didn’t even work on hospital grounds. In Wisconsin, a hospital employee spoiled five hundred doses in a defiant and maligned act taken in the name of “freedom”. Our ancestors look upon us in shame, and those still living with memories of our once legendary past are those who have been failed the most by our current leadership.
One could easily shift the totality of the blame on Donald Trump and call it a day. Depending on where you live, maybe your flavor of the month is Ron DeSantis, or Andrew Cuomo. Bill de Blasio is a personal favorite. There are unelected officials like Anthony Fauci or Scott Atlas, and commentators like Alex Berenson and Clay Travis and Nate Silver, all of whom have offered their varying degrees of “expertise” on the matter to both great fanfare and disdain. But no individual, no matter how powerful they are or how disagreeable their decisions may be, can realistically bear the responsibility of the government’s collective and ongoing failure.
Right now, there should be massive federal operation centers in every major metropolitan area for vaccine distribution. Lord knows there’s the commercial real estate for it. Better yet, nobody is playing baseball in January— use the stadiums. Using the social security database and basic census data, every American should be able to go to a secure website or download an app with two-factor authentication and see their spot on the vaccine line. Sadly, the Silicon Valley money and talent that could make such an operation possible is too busy cozying up to the mayor of Miami on Twitter and conducting some Magellanic expedition to discover that state taxes don’t exist in Texas.
The Pfizer vaccine has had emergency-use authorization for over a month, and I have no idea when I can get it, how I can get it, where I can get it, or from whom I can get it. I know I’m at the end of the line, but for the people at the front, it’s an abject disaster. I know, our incomprehensibly egotistic lame duck president is too busy spending the holidays golfing in West Palm to care about the lives of his countrymen and women. But his incompetence is no excuse for the rest of our government to cede responsibility in his wake. We knew for a year that some kind of vaccine rollout was going to be required. Is it really so much to ask for a form on the New York City government’s website where I can give my email address and phone number and get a text when I am on a queue for the vaccine?
Making matters worse, the new variant of coronavirus, B.1.1.7, is contagious beyond the level of public comprehension. The Western world has proven itself incapable of understanding the concept of exponential growth, but unless it gets its act together quickly, it may well never forget come the spring. Early studies of B.1.1.7 indicate that it is 50% more transmissible than the strain of coronavirus that has propagated throughout the US and the rest of the world. That strain has a reproductive rate (r0) of approximately 1.1 in America, and thus B.1.1.7 a r0 of approximately 1.6. For some perspective, at ten thousand active cases, with an infection fatality rate of 0.8%, the current expected monthly death toll would be around one hundred and thirty deaths. If, for example, this strain was not 50% more transmissible but 50% more lethal, that would lead to around one hundred and ninety deaths. However, with a r0 of 1.6, ten thousand active cases could lead to over nine hundred deaths. If we allow this strain of coronavirus to gain a foothold in our communities, it will make the previous surges look benign.
I am just a guy with a laptop, but I can’t be alone in recognizing the urgency of this situation. We need mobilization on a large scale right now. The United States needs to be vaccinating literally millions of people per day. We are at war and we have the weaponry to win it. Our country was once something to be admired and talked about with pride and braggadocio. Today we are pitied by the rest of the world and looked upon as a laughing stock (one with mediocre superhero movies). We have the capability to be a revered nation once again, or at least one that inspires legitimate patriotism. We need bold, collective action, commandeered by the federal government in lockstep with the private sector, that leverages our unmatched manpower, resources and capital to ensure that our citizenry is safe from the clear and present danger.
There is literally no human being with a conscience, no matter how craven they may be, who is disincentivized from vaccinating as many people as possible as fast as they can. They may think a vaccine will give them autism or something absurd, but they are still incentivized to be vaccinated by any objective measure. Each day we lag behind our target goal is another day we allow the coronavirus, and specifically B.1.1.7, to infiltrate our community and infect our loved ones. It’s beyond time for America to get to work. Shots into arms, now.
