Minor Thoughts from me to you

The incompetence of the Trump administration continually surprises me. They’re constantly finding new depths to break through. This is, apparently, what happens when major cabinet departments are left leaderless and the President is more interested in overturning an election than in doing the governing that he was originally elected to do. I thank God that it’s only 5 more days until we get a new President and a new leadership team.

There is no COVID vaccine reserve. Trump admin already shipped it | Ars Technica

The Trump administration announced Tuesday, January 12, that it would begin shipping reserved vaccine supplies, raising hopes that states may see their vaccine supply potentially double as they work to accelerate the sluggish immunization campaign. But according to a report by The Washington Post, that promised vaccine stockpile doesn’t actually exist—it was already shipped out—and the limited vaccine supply available to states will remain as it is for now.

The news has not only left state health officials angry and confused by the false promises, they’re also left scrambling to sort out distribution changes. In addition to claiming they would release the (non-existent) stockpile, Trump administration officials told states to expand access to vaccines—now allowing anyone over age 65 to get vaccinated and people under 65 who have a documented underlying health condition that makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19.

… Amid the chaos, the Trump administration isn’t offering clear answers on what happened or why officials misled states. According to the Post’s reporting, the Trump administration stopped reserving second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year, and the last reserves of Moderna’s vaccine supply were shipped out over the past weekend.

There was no stockpile to release on Tuesday when the Health and Human Services secretary said at a press briefing that "because we now have a consistent pace of production, we can now ship all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve.”