Ross: Tracing our struggles distributing the vaccine back to the source

Demand for those COVID vaccine shots has clearly exceeded expectations! Even some of the politicians who once upon a time thought this whole thing was exaggerated were eager to get theirs.

I have family members who’ve gotten their shots. But I haven’t gotten my shots because the website says they’re booked.

Which is fine – I can work from home – and it’s not like we’ll be going to dinner and a show anytime soon. So, I’m happy to defer to others.

What I had trouble accepting was this comment on the news the other night from Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota.

“You know Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous success with regard to making the vaccine, but there were no plans really put in place for how to move it into our communities,” he described.

“Basically the plan was just dump the vaccine on the states, good luck.”

So there it is. Here I’m figuring that since millions of us get a flu shot every year just by strolling into a drug store, the people in charge of that, whoever they are, could do the same with this.

But apparently not.

And so someday, historians will look back and wonder why a nation would spend months obsessing over made-up conspiracies and imaginary vote fraud, instead of defending itself against the enemy which at that very moment was mutating as fast as it could.

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