Full Event Recording Here
Today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Dr. Nicole Lurie, and Dr. Brent Schillinger, member of the Palm Beach County Medical Society’s COVID-19 task force, joined Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room to outline the crisis facing the current vaccine distribution effort and call for quick action on President-elect Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” as a way to help fix the problems created by the Trump administration’s failures.
After repeatedly missing their own announced benchmarks, the Trump administration has left states and local communities to figure out vaccine distribution for themselves without adequate oversight and resources. Their abdication of responsibility has caused an unmitigated disaster in the effort to get Americans vaccinated. President-elect Biden’s plan would dramatically overhaul the federal strategy, offering more funding, logistical support, and direct involvement. By building a comprehensive plan to get vaccines to communities across the country and administered into arms, the incoming Biden administration is offering the leadership that’s been sorely lacking.
In addition to addressing the ongoing vaccine distribution failures, President-elect Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” seeks to build a national testing and contract tracing plan, offer direct support for struggling American families with $1400 stimulus checks, expand unemployment insurance, and provide badly needed funding for state and local communities. All together, this relief package lays the foundation to begin the long, difficult work of overcoming the problems left behind by the outgoing Trump administration and helping the country effectively confront the ongoing public health and economic crises.
Full event recording available here.
“I’ve spent this week at vaccination clinics, at testing centers in Connecticut. It’s a mess. And it is a mess created by a dangerously broken vaccine distribution system created by the Trump administration,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “Joe Biden’s plan allows us to walk and chew gum at the same time: continue to expand testing and fix a badly broken vaccine distribution system. Wednesday cannot come quickly enough for this country.”
“Another place where [the Trump] administration has done next to nothing has been the work on helping the public really understand about vaccines and get ready to be vaccinated. We know there’s a huge amount of hesitancy and concerned skepticism out there. We know there’s really good science to know how to address that and [Biden’s] team understands that really well. But this should have started months ago, not now,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Again, it’s going to take a little bit of a reset, and the messaging will take some time to filter down. But I’m looking forward to January 20th, when we have clear, consistent messaging from the top and all the way down the chain – no more of a situation where 40 percent of COVID and COVID vaccine misinformation is directly attributable to the White House.”
“The vaccine distribution failure is a direct result of the Trump administration’s abdication of their responsibility. We have a tremendous amount of chaos and confusion. Trump said: Hey, here’s the vaccine. You guys do what you want. No federal guidelines,” said Dr. Brent Schillinger, member of the Palm Beach County Medical Society’s COVID-19 task force and past president of the Palm Beach County Medical Society. “I’m very excited with President-elect Biden and his 100 million shots in the first 100 days. We definitely need to speed things up if we’re ever going to get to herd immunity, hopefully in months, not years. We need this federal leadership. We need the logistical support. We need the funding to accelerate the number of vaccines administered.”