The long lead times for vaccinating the entire population in many countries is an indication that policy makers aren't being nearly bold enough with their plans. Some of this is because of constraints in vaccine supply, but a lot of it is a failure of imagination.
https://twitter.com/NoLore/status/1350670846570983425
Remember, that for pandemics as well as for climate change, "Speed trumps perfection". Stop obsessiong about "optimality". There is nothing optimal about responding to a pandemic or to climate change, just move as fast as you can.
https://twitter.com/JIMrichards1010/status/1239140710558969857?s=20
What every government agency should now be doing is to set a goal of vaccinating a huge fraction of the population in the span of a few months. Study and copy previous efforts at mass vaccination. Don't assume that "normal" will do. Move fast and think big.
Don't assume that existing institutions, with all their constraints, are the only way to deliver vaccines. It's an emergency, let's start acting like it! Use the national guard and the army. Set up mass vaccination sites in sports arenas.
In the US, we have the Defense Production Act, which the Trump administrational criminally failed to use. Biden has promised to use it, which is the only rational thing to do. fema.gov/disasters/defe…
At the first sign of a pandemic (December 2019 in this case) the defense production act should have been ramped up to mass produce PPE. The power of guaranteed purchases of a certain volume make it worthwhile for manufacturers to take the risk of scaling up.
In January 2020, a US manufacturer said they could produce millions of N95 masks, they just needed a guaranteed order so they could get their factory going. The Trump Administration inexplicably refused. vox.com/covid-19-coron…
Another missed opportunity was the idea to send out lots of masks for free to every US household, also inexplicably nixed by the Trump Administration. This would have saved tens of thousands of lives for sure. independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…
Same story for vaccines, but at least the pharma industry moved forward rapidly. Could they have gone faster with competent US leadership? I don't know.
This strategy of deciding what needs to happen, ignoring imaginary constraints, and doing what needs to be done to achieve the goal is what I call "working forward toward a goal", and it's the way big companies and ambitious entrepreneurs do great things.
It turns out to be the right way to think about climate change solutions also. Stop obsessing about what you think the constraints are. Instead, decide what we need to do to achieve a certain warming limit. I explore the implications of that way of thinking here:
Koomey, Jonathan. 2013. "Moving Beyond Benefit-Cost Analysis of Climate Change." Environmental Research Letters. vol. 8, no. 4. December 2. [iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/…]
I also go into more detail here: Koomey, Jonathan G. 2012. Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. El Dorado Hills, CA: Analytics Press. [amzn.to/2eiZE2C]
The main lesson: Don't obsess about perceived constraints, be they political or economic. Instead, focus on DOING WHAT IS NECESSARY to achieve the goal. Too many people get stymied by worrying about mostly imagined constraints. Instead, move forward boldly to achieve the goal.
Addendum: Here's another absurd failure by Trump and the GOP. Why are we #43 in real-time gene sequencing of this virus? washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/…
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