Biden’s pandemic plan for America

President-elect Joe Biden announced a nearly $2 trillion plan to “save America.” This could include another check for you.

Much of the money is aimed at adding organization to the nation’s vaccine rollout.

Health departments, hospitals, Publix, CVS and Walgreens, even churches in Florida have gotten into the vaccine distribution business. But, with that being said, there’s no single plan to distribute those vaccines.

Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais said there were some assumptions about how the process would work. “It’s always been assumed by everyone that it was going to be a federal and state operation,” said Desjarlais.

The Lee County Manager said that the vaccine distribution plan came together at the last minute. As a result, all 67 of Florida’s counties are under countless different plans. It’s not much different across the country.

Harvard Epidemiologist Michael Mina says that has to change and soon. “What has been lacking in an extraordinary fashion this entire pandemic has been, has been federal leadership,” Mina said. “This virus doesn’t care about borders, it really doesn’t care about borders at all.”

On Thursday night, President-elect Joe Biden has pledged that he will become the one providing that federal leadership. He hopes to have 100 million people vaccinated within his first 100 days in office.

“To tackle it we need coordinated action,” Mina said. “In a war, if you have a bunch of soldiers doing random movements you’re never going to win that war. It needs to be coordinated. And, just small amounts of coordination go a really long way.”

It remains to be seen how Biden will make this happen.

The President-elect said late on Friday that he plans to use both FEMA and The National Guard to help America reach his 100 million vaccinations in the first hundred days. As of today, a little over 11 million people have gotten a COVID-19 vaccine.