State governors had to get creative to improve vaccine rollout

Trump's bungled vaccine rollout is forcing governors to get creative — and political "Just as they did during the early days of the pandemic, the Trump administration left the distribution of the vaccines to the states, and the result is this patchwork approach we see from state to state," said one public policy expert. NBC News

Florida is famous for its oranges, but Gov. Ron DeSantis of late has been busy turning his lemon of a Covid-19 vaccine distribution plan into lemonade.

The first few weeks of the rollout of vaccinations in December were chaotic across the country after the Trump administration in essence left it up to governors to figure out how to get needles into the arms of as many people as possible.

DeSantis was harshly criticized after he chose to ignore federal guidelines and give priority to senior citizens over essential workers. County phone banks were deluged with calls, computer systems crashed, and long lines of elderly people waited overnight outside vaccination centers for first-come, first-served shots. ...

That a savvy politician like DeSantis would use the vaccine for political gain with two key Florida voting blocs is no surprise, said Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida. "That's what politicians do," he said.

But the fact that it took more than a month before DeSantis was able to tout the distribution of vaccine doses speaks to how little help governors got from the federal government early in the rollout, experts said.

"Just as they did during the early days of the pandemic, the Trump administration left the distribution of the vaccines to the states, and the result is this patchwork approach we see from state to state," said Asher Hildebrand, a public policy professor at Duke University and former chief of staff for Rep. David Price, D-N.C. "We shouldn't let the governors off the hook, but managing a massive distribution effort that balances efficiency with equity is very hard to do."

As of Tuesday, Florida had administered 2.6 million doses of vaccine, a rate of 12,141 per 100,000 people, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine tracker. By contrast, West Virginia has the country's top coronavirus vaccination rate, at 18,045 per 100,000 people.

Philip J. Palin, one of the world's top experts on getting supplies to survivors of catastrophes, said West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican who won office as a Democrat and then switched back to the GOP, used resources already available in the state to vaccinate more residents.

"Some states have been much better than others at exploiting their pre-existing assets," said Palin, a veteran government consultant and author of "Out of the Whirlwind: Supply and Demand After Hurricane Maria."

West Virginia has a highly vulnerable but much smaller population than Florida, and it has been able to tap its "community pharmacies and pre-existing black lung programs" to get the shots out, Palin said.

In Washington, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee has also been tapping local resources, although in this case the resources are Microsoft and Starbucks, which are helping with logistics and technology. ...