It’s January 2021. Or maybe it’s still November 2020? Or March 2020? Time may have lost all meaning during the pandemic but at least we’ve all become experts on every nook and cranny of our living spaces.
The pandemic feels endless even as we’ve progressed through the initial lockdowns, a bit of a summer reprieve, developments of therapies and vaccines throughout 2020, and a truly awful winter spike of cases. As the one year anniversary of the initial lockdown in the U.S. approaches, it feel like we’ve always lived this way, even as we’re within shouting distance of the endgame.
The initial vaccine rollout has been a mess, which is not surprising given the size and diffuseness of the American health care system (and the Trump administration’s total abandonment of governing didn’t help). But much like the COVID testing rollout was a mess last spring, the kinks are slowly being worked out.
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. has administered more than 1 million vaccine doses a day for the past six days, with a seven day rolling average up to 1.3 million per day. With the Biden administration actively working with states and localities on improving the “last mile” problem, we have every reason to believe that daily number will continue to rise, just like testing capacity did.
But what about vaccine supply? Are we going to work out the distribution problems only to run out of vaccines to distribute? There’s good news on that front as well. Pfizer and Moderna are on track to deliver up to 18 million doses a week and have pledged to deliver at least 200 million doses by the end of March. The Biden administration informed states it will up their weekly delivery to 10 million per week (the federal government also keeps a small portion to distribute itself). Supply constraints on these two vaccines will continue to ease as time goes on.
Even better news could be on its way next week. Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine is expected to report out its Phase 3 data early next week and the hope is that the results will be good enough to go to the FDA and request Emergency Use Authorization as Pfizer and Moderna did.
Assuming that happens, the vaccine is likely to be approved in February with Johnson and Johnson shots going into arms by March. This vaccine will also help alleviate some of the “last mile” problems since it can be stored at standard refrigerated temperatures and only requires one dose, instead of the two doses of Pfizer and Moderna. J&J is aiming to have 100 million vaccine doses available for Americans by the end of April, which would erase any concerns about supply constraints going forward.
Even without the third vaccine (but certainly with it), there’s no reason to think America can’t administer more than 2 million shots per day. We already achieve this during the height of the flu vaccine campaign in October. There’s a good reason why Biden was comfortable in saying that anyone who wants a COVID vaccine should be able to get one this spring.
One recent concern has been the new variants popping up, but Moderna has already reported that their vaccine still works against these new strains. With the U.K. variant seen as more transmissible that could increase the number of infections in the short term, there’s no reason as of now to believe they would change the vaccination/herd immunity timeline of the next few months.
So let’s think about 90 days from now, April 27th. COVID19 Projections estimates that 75 million Americans will be fully immunized by then, with another 10-20 million imminently scheduled for their second dose. States will have likely transitioned to allowing the general public to sign up for vaccine appointments, and even if you haven’t gotten an appointment yet you probably will be able to soon.
Combined with immunity via infection, COVID19 Projections estimates herd immunity will be reached in June or July. But herd immunity isn’t an on/off switch, so as we approach it the infection rate will decrease throughout the spring. And the warming weather will also help with both lowering the infection rate and making us all feel a little better. By April 27th the pandemic will not be over but there’s a good chance it will feel almost over, whereas right now it still doesn’t feel anywhere close to over.
We just need to make it through the next 90 days.
McConnell’s Strange Gambit
The Senate this week has been consumed by a strange back and forth over the body’s organizing resolution, which sets various Senate rules as well as assigning members to committees and designating chairs. With the Senate now divided 50-50, the organizing resolution needed some adjustments, but due to a similar situation in 2001, there was an off-the-shelf option Schumer and McConnell could implement.
And that’s what they ended up doing, but only after McConnell spent a week insisting that the Democrats swear up and down that they would not touch the filibuster (the rule that makes most legislation in the Senate require 60 votes to pass). Schumer refused, not allowing himself to be held hostage by the minority leader on the very first issue that arose in their new roles.
So for a few days nothing happened, freshman senators didn’t have committees, Republicans senators remained as zombie chairs of their committees. The press started asking senators about their opinion on the filibuster as this dragged into the start of this week and Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema reiterated their past opposition to eliminating the filibuster. They didn’t make any new commitments, they just confirmed their past statements on this issue when asked.
Nothing else changed, but McConnell . . . just declared victory? And so the organizing resolution is set to be passed this week without any changes.
What was McConnell doing? It’s not totally clear.
The filibuster question was inevitably going to arise once Democrats took complete control of D.C. McConnell trying to force the fight proactively instead of just defending the current rules put him in a situation where a climbdown was inevitable. He asked something of Schumer they both knew he couldn’t give, not a logical negotiating strategy. Perhaps he was hoping to divide the Senate Democratic caucus? If so, that didn’t happen at all. They only thing the gambit seems to have accomplished is prove that McConnell may not be the tactical genius he’s often credited as being.