Q&A of the Day – Is Biden the administration withholding vaccines from Florida? Part 1
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: A question for you about the dwindling supply of the vaccine. Since Florida went for Trump and the Dems are mad about that and there were calls for Floridians to pay, is it possible that they are sending more vaccines to states that went to Biden over red states? I honestly do not believe that Biden has the mental wherewithal to be actively be running his administration and this is being done by the people that are actually running things.
Bottom Line: It’s a question which without evidence to the contrary I don’t believe to be the case, but is it possible? It’s notable that at one of the earliest pressers with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, she made a false and misleading comment that Florida didn’t need more vaccines because they’d only administered half of what they had. This was the natural byproduct of Florida having been a national leader in its vaccination program through the first month of the vaccine rollout. Once a first dose is administered, a 2nd dose is allocated for Floridians who’d been administered first doses. One has to wait three weeks for a second dose of a Pfizer vaccine and four weeks for a second dose of a Moderna vaccine. During that waiting period, those doses are on hand, but aren’t available for use by anyone other than those they’ve been allocated for. Last week I broke out Florida’s total first dose vaccines by week. Here’s what it looked like (week of):
- 12/20: 82,451
- 12/27: 99,348
- 1/4: 337,742
- 1/10: 387,941
- 1/17: 376,575
- 1/24: 195,608
- 1/31: 240,556
There was a significant decline in first dose vaccines into Florida during the first two weeks of the Biden administration. With updated information here’s what we’ve seen since (week of):
- 2/7: 274,882
While last week was the best week of the Biden administration thus far for first dose vaccinations into Florida, it was still 113,059 vaccinations, or 29%, below the peak week, over a month ago, from the Trump administration. What’s more is last Friday was the only day in which Florida had more first doses to administer to Floridian’s than second doses in over two weeks. That necessarily illustrates the point that Florida was consistently receiving more first dose vaccines a month ago than we are today. It’s frustrating and it is confounding. The longer we go into the national vaccination rollout, the more efficiently the program should be. There’s no clear explanation as to why Florida’s supply of vaccines has taken a nosedive. So, is it a matter of politics as you’ve wondered? To make the fair comparison it’s necessary to compare Florida’s trends to the national trends. We'll take a closer look in the second part of today's Q&A.
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