Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) share an elbow bump greeting at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on November 17, 2020.HANNAH MCKAY/Getty Images
A group of 11 Republican senators and senators-elect led by Sen. Ted Cruz say they will reject President-elect Joe Biden’s victory when Congress meets to certify the Electoral College vote. The group, consisting of seven senators and four senators-elect, said there should be a 10-day audit of results “in the disputed states.” Although the move won’t actually change anything, it does illustrate how some lawmakers are all too eager to go along with President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen from him even though there isn’t a shred of evidence to support that contention. And they’re willing to go against the wishes of their party’s leadership in Congress to do so. “We intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified,’ unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed,” the senators wrote in a statement. “We do not take this action lightly.”
These 11 senators and senators-elect join Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was the first senator to announce he would go along with many House Republicans and object to the certification of the election results. That means almost a quarter of Senate Republicans will be defying Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has called on Republicans not to try to overturn the election. On Saturday Hawley said he hopes “many more will listen to their constituents and act.”
As many as 140 Republicans in the House have suggested they could vote against certifying Biden’s victory. That means what should be a mere formality this coming week will be filled with partisan drama amid questions about how many more Republicans will be joining the effort to contest the results. “With all due respect to my Republican colleagues in the Senate who are doing this: can you please get a grip?” tweeted Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “Election officials across the country, including Republican Governors, have certified these results. This is embarrassing.”
Cruz was apparently the one that led the effort and ultimately the ones that signed one were Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Mike Braun of Indiana. Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama also joined in.
In their statement, the Republican senators and senators-elect allege that “by any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.” But they fail to cite any evidence that would support any contention that there was any problem with the election. Instead, they simply note that polls show most Republicans think the election was “rigged,” a claim Trump has been making even before he lost. So as far as they’re concerned, the audit is needed in order to make sure Americans trust the system without mentioning, of course, that it was Republicans who have cast doubt in the electoral process in the first place. “A fair and credible audit — conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20 — would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president,” they wrote. “We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.”
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse from Nebraska said earlier in the week that Republicans who were going to contest the election results were involved in a “dangerous ploy” in order to further their political ambitions.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) talks to reporters following the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on September 30, 2020 in Washington, D.C.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Vandals struck the homes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the first days of the year. In both cases, the apparent vandals spray-painted messages related to stimulus checks. Several messages, including “weres my money” were spray-painted across the front door of the Kentucky Republican’s home. The vandalism came shortly after the Senate adjourned Friday night without approving a measure to increase stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000, which had been supported by President Donald Trump and Democrats.
“I’ve spent my career fighting for the First Amendment and defending peaceful protest. I appreciate every Kentuckian who has engaged in the democratic process whether they agree with me or not,” McConnell said in a statement Saturday morning. “This is different,” he added. “Vandalism and the politics of fear have no place in our society.”
The vandalism in Kentucky came shortly after vandals spray-painted the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and left a severed pig’s head in front of her garage along with some fake blood. A photo posted on social media showed the vandals spray-painted a message that appeared to have to do with coronavirus relief bill. The message read “2K” with a line through it. “Cancel Rent? We Want everything!” read the graffiti. The letters “UBI!” were also spray-painted on the garage door, an apparent reference to universal basic income.
Police confirmed it responded to report of vandalism at around 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day. In an email, police confirmed that officers found that suspects had “painted graffiti on the garage door and left a pig’s head on the sidewalk.” It isn’t clear whether any suspects have been identified. A Twitter account that identifies as a “pro Trump patriot” and “conservative creator” was the first to publish photos of the vandalism. Others then tweeted photos showing how the graffiti had been covered up.
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An Argentinian national holds his ID card and his international certificate of vaccination after being immunized against yellow fever before traveling to Brazil in January 2008.Juan Mabromata/Getty Images
For years I held onto my fraying yellow “International Certificate of Vaccination” with the World Health Organization logo, which showed I had been inoculated against such exotic-sounding diseases as dengue, malaria, meningitis, and yellow fever. The document made me feel both worldly and like a mamma’s boy, as she was the one who’d impressed upon me the utter importance of keeping that document updated, and for eternity.
So it’s a source of some gnawing guilt that the document is with me no more, a victim of too many moves, and a sense that it is was an antique from a bygone era. The last time I recall taking the certificate anywhere was many years ago on an atypically adventurous (for me, anyways) reporting trip to Burkina Faso, after having dropped by the New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine for some vaccines. My travel destinations in recent years have been far less adventurous—trips to Phoenix, California, Mexico City, and London haven’t required prep visits to Tropical Medicine centers or producing the yellow cardboardy document to border officials, and so it is lost to history.
But the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing rollout of the vaccine against the virus, means immunity passports are likely to make a big comeback. And as Jane C. Hu wrote recently for Future Tense, the digital immunity passports being developed might be needed not only to fly overseas, but possibly to return to the office, enroll in school, or go to the movie theater.
I fear the coming vaccination debates of 2021 will make the mask debates of 2020 seem tame in comparison. What will likely prove true in both cases is that the abdication of forceful public intervention—a squeamishness to compel individuals to do what’s right for the collective good out of misplaced deference to privacy, autonomy, or liberty—will have created dueling spheres of public life, with dueling narratives about medical and scientific truths.
We have seen this already in the senseless, toxic debates over mask-wearing. The reluctance of too many public authorities to mandate mask-wearing means we must navigate two different realms, one governed by reason and expertise, the other by an exaggerated subservience to individuals’ caprice. Sadly for the health of our democracy, the latter is the public sphere; the former tends to be private domains (say a national retailer imposing its mask-wearing rule in a jurisdiction that doesn’t have one).
This danger of privatizing the exercise of common sense and science-governed public health practices becomes more acute with the vaccine rollout, as Jane’s story makes clear. Kudos to Common Pass, IBM, CLEAR, and others for developing systems that will allow us to easily prove we have been vaccinated. But it’s a shame our political culture is such that we can’t even contemplate the possibility that our government should or will assume the responsibility of mandating vaccination and creating a foolproof register that prevents the privacy violations and discriminatory practices Jane’s piece warns are inherent in a market-driven, fragmented immunity passport app market.
Still, better the private sector than no one. But the sequencing here will be one of the trickier stories of 2021. At what point will it be reasonable or just for large swaths of the American economy to shut out the non-vaccinated? And even if this all goes better than expected (and early indications bet against that), the vaccine debates will likely exacerbate already alarming levels of cultural and political polarization and divisiveness in our society.
Our last Future Tense Fiction story of 2020, Paul Theroux’s “The Vastation,” posits a future in which another pandemic ravages the country and leads to a Balkanized Midwestern landscape of self-contained gated fiefdoms vying for precious resources and food. Theroux is a famed globe-trotting travel writer (has anyone been on more of the world’s trains than he has?), but this portrayal of vastation in a future U.S., delivered via a suspenseful father-son road trip, is more haunting than anywhere else you could go.
But hopefully things won’t come to that.
Maybe we can solve all our problems in our sleep. That’s the intriguing premise of our other Future Tense Fiction story published in December, Hal Y. Zhang’s “Dream Soft, Dream Big.” The eagerness of the story’s protagonist, Katia Zahorski, to contribute her dreams to collective problem-solving provide an incisive and humorous critique of our gig economy, ephemeral celebrity culture, startup craze, and performative behavior on social media.
Ben Macintyre is a prolific writer of riveting non-fiction espionage books, and his latest, Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy, is a masterpiece of the genre. Many spy tales involve plenty of daring and clever deception on behalf of what in retrospect can seem fairly low stakes. In the case of Ursula Kuczynski, code-named Sonya, the stakes were nuclear parity between superpowers, and the well-being of her children. In 2021, it should not come as a surprise that one of the most consequential spies of the 20th century was a multitasking mother working from home, but an amusing subplot of Macintyre’s tale is the extent to which the blinding power of pervasive sexism (say, among spy catchers) worked in Sonya’s favor. For Future Tensers, the book is of particular interest for its portrayal of wireless tradecraft and as a clear primer of what was, among other things, the single most important case of industrial espionage ever: the Soviet appropriation of the IP to build the A-bomb.
What Next: TBD
Slate’s technology podcast took the last two weeks of the year off, but stay subscribed for more in 2021 about tech, power, and the future.
Upcoming Events
• Wednesday, Jan. 13, noon Eastern: Section 230’s Fate Under the Biden Administration. One of our core preoccupations in 2020, the fate of online free speech amid the swirling crosswinds of authoritarian calls for censorship and the proliferation of toxic disinformation and abuse on social media platforms, is likely to become only more urgent in 2021. Section 230, the law shielding internet companies from liability for user-created content, is in everyone’s crosshairs. So it’s timely to kick off our 2021 online events series with a stellar group of experts discussing where we go from here in regulating our virtual public square. Visit the New America website for more information and to register.
• Wednesday, Jan. 27, noon Eastern: Afrofuturism’s Reimagined Tomorrows. In a moment defined by the growing awareness and rejection of the systemic racism highlighted by the disparate impact of the pandemic and the killings of Black citizens by law enforcement, the project of imagining a future where Black people are surviving, thriving, and leading technological and social change is more urgent than ever. Black Lives Matter, and so do Black futures—to all of our futures. Visit the New America website for more information and to register.
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To get advice from Prudie, send questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.) Join the live chat every Monday at noon. Submit your questions and comments here before or during the live discussion. Or call the Dear Prudence podcast voicemail at 401-371-DEAR (3327) to hear your question answered on a future episode of the show.
Dear Prudence,
When my husband and I were dating six years ago and talking about our dealbreakers, I was very clear that one of mine was messiness. I can’t, and never could, live in a cluttered, messy house. I’m not a neat freak. I just don’t like seeing dirty dishes left out or clothes all over the floor. My husband has never been the neatest, but he was never a slob either, so it worked. Now we’ve had a baby during the pandemic … and he has turned into the biggest slob I have ever seen. He will not push a dish in the sink. He takes off his dirty clothes and leaves them in huge piles on the bathroom floor. There are baby bottles everywhere. We are sleeping in separate rooms because he refuses to curtail his mess, which is growing out of control. I tried placing trash cans all over the house, but he puts his trash next to the can! His room literally has a pile of trash in it. Could this be a mental health issue, with all of the recent changes to our life? I tried talking to him about the mess, but he says I am focusing on things that don’t matter. I have started looking for my own housing because I see no way to live like this forever. Any advice?
—Unending Mess
This could certainly have to do with your husband’s mental health, especially since his behavior and your circumstances changed drastically in the past year and he seems indifferent to the ways it’s driven a wedge between the two of you. The fact that he can’t bring himself to place the trash in a trash can certainly speaks to his state of mind. Have any of your husband’s friends or loved ones noticed a shift in his outlook? Would he describe himself as overwhelmed by the changes brought on by the new baby and the pandemic, or would he say they “don’t matter,” either? If he seems to think very little matters these days, he may be depressed, and it’s worth encouraging him to bring this up with his doctor. He may try to dismiss you again, at which point you may want to explain just how seriously this is affecting you and that you’ve started considering separate living arrangements. If nothing else, he should care about how much extra work he’s making for you. Talk to your own friends and family about this too, because whatever happens next, you’re going to need help, either in caring for your husband or in a trial separation with a newborn. You can treat him with compassion while also being clear that this sudden, drastic change is not trivial and that you’re not willing to live in a house filled with garbage.
Help! Am I Giving Up on My Troubled Daughter if I Send Her Away?
Danny M. Lavery takes a look at some of the many memorable letters of 2020 on this week’s episode of the Dear Prudence podcast.
A few weeks ago, we had long discussions with our nanny about how to manage the latest COVID surge. We asked that we all strictly limit our interactions with others, including canceling Thanksgiving plans. She wasn’t happy about the request—she is single and lonely, with twin newborn grandchildren she wanted to spend time with. But for us, it was a necessary condition of continuing our arrangement. We offered other options: to pause work for a few weeks with extended leave, or to keep her holiday plans but quarantine for two weeks after. She begrudgingly chose to cancel Thanksgiving. You can guess what happened—she attended a family Thanksgiving anyway, got infected with COVID, and now my whole family has tested positive, including my 3-year-old daughter and 8-month-old son. I’m heartbroken that I didn’t protect them, and we don’t know what the long-term implications of this disease are. But I know her actions were not malicious. She just wanted to see her family and was worried about losing her job if she took extended leave. We all love her and feel like she’s part of our family. But she endangered us, and it feels like trust is gone. What’s the right thing to do? Offer severance and let her go? Make an effort to understand and rebuild trust?
—Post-Thanksgiving Blues
I think you put your nanny in an untenable situation. You say she was worried about losing her job if she took extended leave, and since you’re the person who employs her, it’s worth reevaluating your actions in light of that. Asking someone who depends on you for their livelihood (no colleagues, no HR department, no union) to decide whether she wants to forgo income to see her newborn grandchildren for Thanksgiving is hardly a fair question, and I think a better choice would have been to give her two weeks off, paid, so that she could see her family and quarantine before returning to work. Asking your employee to make that call results in exactly the sort of outcome you’d hoped to avoid.
No one deserves to get COVID, and I can understand you feel terrible that your children have tested positive too. I hope all of you recover quickly. But if you’re frustrated that your nanny made a risky decision, be frustrated at yourself for putting her in that position. You were not faced with a choice between your income and seeing your family like she was. Make an effort to understand why forcing someone to choose between seeing their family or keeping their job is cruel, and don’t put your domestic staff in such a position again, especially not if you claim to feel like they’re part of your family.
Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend and I have known each other for nine years, loved each other for six, but only officially became a couple three weeks ago. We were both wracked with anxiety about the new relationship, in no small part because my boyfriend is very religious, and the people in his church don’t approve of me. (That’s also why it took us so long to get together.) My boyfriend has been adamant about the fact that he’s going to fight for me and that he wouldn’t have gotten into this relationship with me if he’d planned on giving up this easily. I believe him.
A week after we got together, my boyfriend went into isolation for two weeks. He’s had a trip planned for months to visit a friend who is particularly critical of our relationship, and he’s isolating now to make sure he doesn’t bring COVID with him. The isolation was hard on both of us, but I was fine with making it work and wasn’t against him going on the trip. I’d assumed that the most I had to worry about on this trip was that they’d spend the whole week he was there trying to talk him out of the relationship. Just four days before he was supposed to make the 13-hour drive to the very anti-mask state in which the friend lives, my boyfriend told me that the friend and his wife have not been self-isolating, and both work public-facing jobs every day. One of them is a health care worker. Learning that sent me into a full panic, since that puts him at so much greater risk of getting infected. I’ve tried to express just how anxious I am about this trip now and how I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to go, while also trying not to make it sound like I’m telling him what to do. He’s listened to my arguments and even double-checked with the couple to ask how exposed they actually are (allegedly, they’re confident that they’re not exposed). But he’s set on making the trip. I’m trying very hard not to take it personally, but it feels like a dismissal of my anxiety that he’s still going. At the same time, I don’t think he should have to pause everything just because I’m anxious about something. I’m truly most concerned about the COVID risk, but what does it say that he’s choosing to overlook my anxiety and follow through with a cross-country road trip to see a friend who doesn’t want him to be dating me? How do I handle this?
—COVID Road Trip
It certainly says something that a week into your relationship your boyfriend went into isolation for two weeks in order to visit his close friend who thinks you two should break up. You should handle it however you like, so long as you don’t pretend to be OK with it just because this relationship is new and you want it to work out so badly.
Since your primary concern is the COVID risk, you should talk to your boyfriend about what you’ll need from him before you’re prepared to spend time together in person—whichever combination of testing, isolating, masking, and contact tracing that may be. Did your boyfriend tell you that his friend hadn’t actually been isolating four days before he was due to leave on his trip because he’d just found out himself, or had he known for longer and kept that information from you because he knew you’d be upset? Do you and your boyfriend have similar ideas of what “fighting” for your relationship looks like, or does he feel pretty at ease about something that makes you feel isolated and dismissed? Don’t push yourself to “not take it personally,” especially when this is a series of personal decisions. These differences matter, and you have a right to advocate for yourself when you feel frustrated, dismissed, or exposed to unnecessary risks—especially by the person you love.
Now available in your podcast player: the audiobook edition of Danny M. Lavery’s latest book, Something That May Shock and Discredit You. Get it from Slate.
More Advice From How to Do It
I’m a woman in my late 20s and I’ve been casually dating for a few years, not really looking for anything serious but open if I find the right person. When I’m alone, I don’t have much of an issue climaxing with my vibrator, but my orgasms have always been a bit underwhelming. However, no matter what I or the guy does, even if I use the vibrator with him there, I can’t seem to get off with someone else around me. Especially when I was a bit younger, this was something that I really struggled with, but I’ve gotten to the point where I just accept that it’s a part of who I am. It doesn’t stop me from really enjoying sex and feeling close with a partner, even if there’s no fireworks conclusion.
My issue is the guys I’m sleeping with. Before we have sex, I let them know that it’s not going to happen for me, so they aren’t expecting me to. The reactions I get vary widely. Some guys seem to think it’s an excuse to not try at all, and others seem to think that theirs is the magical penis that will solve all my problems and get incredibly disappointed when they realize that it won’t. I’ve had a guy burst into tears because he “couldn’t please me” and another who told me that I wasn’t meant to be with anyone because I couldn’t orgasm. Most hurtfully, I had a boyfriend break up with me because “How can I love you if you can’t orgasm?” I don’t know how to make the men in my life just take me at face value when I tell them that I really am enjoying myself and not to worry about it. Should I stop telling them? Fake it? What I’m doing doesn’t seem to be working.
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President Donald Trump boards Air Force One while departing from Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida on December 31, 2020, as he travels back to Washington, D.C. after his Christmas holiday break in Mar-a-Lago.ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/Getty Images
President Donald Trump took some time on the first day of the year to make baseless claims about the integrity of Georgia’s electoral system in a move that will no doubt concern Republicans who are trying to get voters to turn out for the runoff elections Tuesday that will decide which party controls the Senate. Trump tweeted that next week’s Georgia runoff elections are “both illegal and invalid” mere days before he is scheduled to go to the state to campaign for the Republican candidates.
Trump began his series of Jan. 1 tweets by once again baselessly claiming there was “massive corruption” in the November election and he actually received “far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States.” The president went on to specifically mention Georgia and its consent decree, which he decried as “unconstitutional.” That decree meant that the state’s two Senate races, as well as his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, were not valid, he said. The decree Trump is referring to was agreed to between Democrats and Republicans in the state to come up with a way to allow voters to fix absentee ballots that have a problem with their signature. Trump and his allies have repeatedly argued the decree was illegal because state legislatures are the ones that have the power to regulate congressional elections. But many have pointed out that the Supreme Court has made clear that legislatures can hand that power over to state officials.
Trump’s latest tweets come amid concerns by Republican leaders that the president’s repeated attacks on the voting system could end up depressing turnout in the critical Georgia runoffs. The questions about the integrity of the election may help explain why it seems that Democrats far outpaced Republicans in early voting in the state. A record three million voters in Georgia cast their ballots early for the runoffs. The early voting period ended Thursday and no votes will be counted until polls close Tuesday but data shows more votes were cast in areas that tend to favor Democrats. That means Republicans need to come out in large numbers on the day of the election in order make up the difference.
Beyond his attacks on the integrity of the elections, Trump has also been blasting Republican leaders, a move that has also concerned many in the GOP who worry that frustrated allies of the president may decide to skip the runoffs entirely. In a another tweet Friday, Trump called Republican Senate leaders “pathetic” for not coming through on $2,000 stimulus checks and failing to repeal legal protections for social media companies.
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Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) studies notes as Attorney General William Barr testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing in the Congressional Auditorium at the US Capitol Visitors Center July 28, 2020 in Washington, D.C.MATT MCCLAIN/Getty Images
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas and 11 Arizona Republicans that sought to force Vice President Mike Pence to essentially overturn the results of the election and hand it to President Donald Trump. U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, said Gohmert and his fellow Republicans lacked standing to sue. In what was always seen as a far-fetched effort by Trump allies to change the outcome of the presidential race, Gohmert had argued that Pence could unilaterally alter the Electoral College count. The lawmaker had called on the court to say that Pence, who will preside over the Jan. 6 session to certify the election results, could unilaterally decide whether to throw out some of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral votes.
Kernodle said that Gohmert and his allies couldn’t sue because no individual member of Congress has standing to sue if the harm supposedly affects the entire Congress. But in addition to the standing issue, the judge noted that Gohmert’s claim is entirely speculative and based on a series of hypotheticals. “Plaintiffs presuppose what the Vice President will do on January 6, which electoral votes the Vice President will count or reject from contested states, whether a Representative and a Senator will object under Section 15 of the Electoral Count Act, how each member of the House and Senate will vote on any such objections, and how each state delegation in the House would potentially vote under the Twelfth Amendment absent a majority electoral vote,” Kernodle wrote in his 13-page ruling. “All that makes Congressman Gohmert’s alleged injury far too uncertain to support standing.”
Even as he dismissed the case, Kernodle still left a door open for Gohmert and his allies to pursue their case in court. By dismissing the case without prejudice, Kernodle gave the lawmaker an opportunity to reframe their lawsuit. After the ruling Friday evening, Gohmert and the other plaintiffs said they would be appealing to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In an interview with Newsmax, Gohmert said he was optimistic about the appeal but said the judge’s ruling meant that the only option left to those upset about the results of the election could be street violence. “Bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘we’re not going to touch this, you have no remedy,’” Gohmert said. “Basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you’ve got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM.”
Kernodle’s ruling came a day after Pence, who was represented by Justice Department lawyers, called on him to reject the case, claiming that the arguments Gohmert was making meant he had to file suit against Congress, not the vice president. “A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” wrote the Justice Department lawyer. Lawyers representing the House of Representatives also said the Kernodle should dismiss the lawsuit because it would “authorize the Vice President to ignore the will of the Nation’s voters.”
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Nat Moore 69, former Miami Dolphin player, receives a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine from Susana Flores Villamil, RN from Jackson Health System, at the Jackson Memorial Hospital on December 30, 2020 in Miami, Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
As the United States began 2021 by crossing the grim milestone of 20 million coronavirus cases there is increasing concern about the vaccine rollout that is going far slower, and is much more disorganized, than expected. President Donald Trump had vowed 100 million vaccinations by the end of the year. Those ambitions were later sharply reduced and the Secretary of Health and Human Services said 20 million would be vaccinated by the end of 2020. In the end, the country didn’t even get close to that number. As of Thursday, less than 3 million people had received the first dose of the vaccine, out of almost 12.5 million that had been distributed, according to the data from the Centers for Disease Control and prevention.
Many are expressing disappointment and frustration at the slow rate of the rollout, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We would’ve liked to have seen it run smoothly and have 20 million doses into people today, by the end of the (year) 2020, which was the projection. Obviously, it didn’t happen and that’s disappointing,” Fauci said Thursday. “Hopefully, as you get into the first couple of weeks in January, the gaining of momentum will get us to the point where we want to be.” President Donald Trump has shifted the blame on to states, but experts say the real problem is that the federal government is not providing enough financial or technical support to make sure the rollout goes as smoothly as possible. “There’s a lot states still need to do,” Dr. Ashish Jha, a health policy researcher and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told the Associated Press, “but you need a much more active role from the federal government than what they have been willing to do. They’ve largely said to states, ´This is your responsibility. Figure it out.”’
President-elect Joe Biden has joined in on the chorus of criticism against the slow rollout. “As I long feared and warned the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” he said earlier this week, warning that at the current pace “it’s gonna take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”
The slow rollout is happening at a time when experts are warning that there is an urgent need to speed up vaccinations amid worrying signs that a new and more contagious variant of the virus appears to be making its way through the United States. “If the new variant replaces the existing variant and we don’t vaccinate quickly, the second wave will start cresting again and will crest really high, and that’s something to take really seriously,” Dr. Ronald Scott Braithwaite, a professor at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine, told the New York Times.
The problem right now is largely one of bureaucracy and coordination as the federal government pushes decisions to states, and some of those states then push the decisions down to local health departments and hospitals. That has produced a patchwork of systems and has meant that while some got fewer doses than they expected others have more than they know what do with and sometimes don’t even have enough syringes to dole out the doses they do have.
With all the problems officials are facing in this initial phase of the rollout there is increased concern about what will happen once the efforts expand to include more people. “The real challenge is around what happens when we get a larger supply and what happens when we have to vaccinate people that don’t work in a hospital,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers. As different states make their own decisions about who should be vaccinated first that will undoubtedly lead to confusion and could spark frustration. Amid all the delay and bureaucratic confusion there is also concern that vaccines could expire before they are used.
Although it is clearly not the entirety of the problem, experts say one unexpected reason why the rollout is going slower than expected is because a surprisingly large number of health care workers are often none too eager to get the shot. In Los Angeles County, for example, somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of frontline workers who were offered the vaccine declined to get it, reports the Los Angeles Times. That dynamic seems to have caught everyone by surprise considering that researchers always assumed hospital staff would be the most eager to get vaccinated.
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