Where America’s Vaccine Triumph Fell Short
In a crisis, Washington should fully embrace its many strengths, and also those of the private sector.
A public-private victory that should go down in U.S. history.
Photographer: Ulrich Baumgarten/Getty Images
It’s not surprising that pharmacies are turning out to be fantastic at distributing Covid-19 vaccines. As Alex Tabarrok and I pointed out in February, they are literally everywhere — 86% of the US population lives within 5 miles of one. And they have significant experience in large-scale vaccine delivery, giving out 40-50 million flu vaccines annually.
But the success of pharmacies raises an important question about another part of the effort: the federally-run mass vaccination sites.1Managed by FEMA, staffed by the National Guard and flush with federal funds, they are underperforming the Biden administration’s expectations, according to Politico.