OPINION Florida Guv’s Next Pandemic Fiasco: Vaccine Rollout

Rogue Florida Guv’s Next Pandemic Fiasco: Vaccine Rollout States are deciding who to protect first, and some governors have their acts together better than others. Ron DeSantis is off the deep end, experts say. The Daily Beast

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is divvying up the doses on a weekly basis as they roll out of Pfizer’s factory and sending them out via UPS and FedEx. Then, it’s up to authorities in each U.S. state and territory to decide exactly where those doses go—and who’s first in line to get them.

It’s a messy process. States are, in essence, deciding who gets protection first—and who must continue running the risk of catching COVID-19, and potentially dying of it. ...

Perhaps no state illustrates that dilemma better than Florida. The state is uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus owing to its combination of a huge elderly population—nearly 400,000 of whom live in nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities—and a GOP governor and legislature that have downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic while actively resisting local authorities’ efforts to control transmission via social-distancing measures and mask mandates.

Florida badly needs the vaccine in order to hold back a rising wave of infections—around 9,000 new cases a day in recent weeks—and prevent a nightmarish spike in deaths. The state has already lost nearly 20,000 people. How many more die depends in part on who state authorities allow to get vaccinated first as the supply of the vaccine slowly grows.

But Florida is already getting it wrong, according to experts surveyed by The Daily Beast, and the results could be disastrous.

As states loosely align their own vaccine-distribution policies with broad guidance from the CDC, four highly vulnerable groups are competing for the first batches of vaccine: frontline health workers, elderly nursing home residents, workers in essential industries, and people of color.

The problem: Florida health officials under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis are putting them in the wrong order, experts said.

Neither the Florida Department of Health nor DeSantis’ office responded to requests for comment for this report.

Florida’s strategy, a draft of which is available here, is to rush 55 percent of its initial supply of 180,000 doses of Pfizer’s genetically engineered “messenger RNA” vaccine—enough to vaccinate 90,000 people, assuming no spoilage—to big hospitals for vaccinating their own staffs.

The state is setting aside the remaining 45 percent of doses for people in nursing homes. It appears likely that proportion will also apply to the rest of the approximately one million doses Florida expects to receive from Pfizer before the end of the month.

But, as is the case in most states, none of Florida’s early doses are going to essential workers such as grocery-store staff, transit workers, pharmacy employees, and teachers. What makes Florida’s plan so controversial is that, unlike many other large states, Florida authorities have declined to restrict businesses and schools or to mandate mask-wearing. Those policies have left Floridian essential workers no choice but to work among an especially ineffective public and risk exposure. ...