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Medicine United States

America Has Vaccinated More People Than Any Other Country in the World (axios.com) 222

Posted by EditorDavid from the made-in-USA dept.
Despite America's vast population of nearly 330 million people, 43.6 million Americans have already received one or both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Axios writes: The U.S. has carried out more vaccinations than any country in the world, and given a first dose to a higher percentage of its population (12%) than all but five countries: Israel, the Seychelles, the UAE, the U.K. and Bahrain. In fact, the U.S. is distributing doses three times as quickly as the EU, adjusted for population, and nearly five times as quickly as Canada.

The U.S. has some major advantages over most of the world. Not only does America have the money to reserve more doses than it could possibly use, it also has the capacity to manufacture them domestically. Canada's slow rollout and the recent dispute over doses between the EU and U.K. have underlined the difficulties of relying on imports...

It also helps that the two most effective vaccines on the market were developed entirely (Moderna) or partially (Pfizer/BioNTech) in the U.S.
Their article concludes that "Despite crumbling infrastructure and chaotic politics, the U.S. remains a scientific, technological and manufacturing powerhouse."

The Associated Press reports that America's daily inoculation average "climbed to 1.7 million shots per day last week," adding "but as many as double that number of doses are soon expected to be available on average each day."
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America Has Vaccinated More People Than Any Other Country in the World More

America Has Vaccinated More People Than Any Other Country in the World

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  • "Despite"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @04:42PM (#61087096) Homepage

    I am as much "woo hoo, America FTW" as just about anybody, but the first sentence of this summary is terrible.

    The US has vaccinated such a large number of people in part because we have a large population to vaccinate. If you look at the per capita rate, as mentioned in the block quote, five countries are ahead of us. Whether being sixth in the world is good or not is up for debate, given that the US is home to so many of the vaccine developers, funded so much of the research, and has such a high per-capita income.

    Personally, I think a debate of whether the US should be higher or lower in the world ranking is entirely misplaced. We -- the world as a whole -- should focus on questions of how to get the vaccine to people more quickly than we are right now. Secondarily we should figure out where those additional vaccines should go. Relative scoring should be ... oh ... about 100th in priority.

    • Re:"Despite"? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @05:12PM (#61087200) Homepage Journal

      I think the initial surge of vaccinations will taper off and the huge percentage of Americans who are skeptical or downright anti-vax will become increasingly apparent as the progress towards herd immunity grinds to a halt.

      I full expect several COVID-19 strains to become endemic in the US and for travel restrictions to persist for decades.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sarren1901 ( 5415506 )

        You do realize that even getting vaccinated doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting or spreading covid, right? Covid is going to become endemic but there isn't going to be some perpetual travel restrictions specifically against USA because of it.

        On the other hand, some popular tourist destinations are deciding to not letting tourist back until the natural environment has healed. Covid is giving everyone a chance to reevaluate.

        • Probably would (Score:4, Interesting)

          by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @08:58PM (#61088000) Homepage

          You do realize that even getting vaccinated doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting or spreading covid, right?

          Vaccination doesn't merely convert severe cases into asymptomatic, it also reduce the total number of people who catch the disease.
          The *reason* it's not advertised *yet* is that because until recently we didn't have yet the necessary number to by officially able to affirm it with confidence.

          e.g.: most of the initial data released from Phase III studies did only concern symptomatic cases, they did not have enough systematic testing to detect whether or not there was an increase in asymptomatic cases keeping the total number case the same, or if the asymptomatic cases remain the same number and thus the total has decreased.
          Now we start to have some systematic testing done show that no, the number of asymptomatic cases hasn't increase. i.e.: you are shifting every to lighter - deaths and severe cases became light cases, light cases became asymptomatic and asymptomatic became never infected. i.e.: the total number of cases is reduced.
          Also by now, in some countries like Israel, there's enough vaccinated people that their epidemics stats start to be affected.

          Which is the expected result with most(*) vaccine:
          less sick people means less opportunity for the virus to spread.

          (*): i.e. - vaccine targetting the pathogen, not some toxin.

          Covid is going to become endemic

          This entirely depends on the behaviour of covidiots and antivaxxers.
          If enough of them manage to prevent reaching herd immunity, and if enough of them keep helping the virus circulate: certainly.
          If people decide to collectively act more responsibly: perhaps it will be definitively eradicated from some part of the world.

          but there isn't going to be some perpetual travel restrictions specifically against USA because of it.

          Travel ban? probably not ad eternam.
          Travel restrictions? Yes.
          Some countries are probably going to require you to vaccinate before letting you travel (Just like how currently you need to be vaccinated against some tropical disease when travelling to some developing countries). And might require some quarantine under some circumstances on your way back.
          (And additional measures to make sure you don't bring back any resistant strain that is bound to happen in country that don't reach herd immunity threshold).

          • The main reason the vaccine is not advertised as reducing the need for preventive measures has nothing to do with if it in fact does make them extraneous. It is because too many people will not wear a mask and then lie and claim they were vaccinated.

        • You do realize that even getting vaccinated doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting or spreading covid, right?

          Statistically it does. when we talk about herd immunity we are implicitly discussing a large number of people.

          Generally speaking, a vaccinations (and inoculation) is used to limits the spread of a contagious disease. This can be accomplished by full immunity, but also by reducing the viral load and thus the amount of sheading of live virus into the environment, or by limiting the duration of the course of disease. All of these matter in the statistics of epidemiology.

          Lower in priority, but not completely ig

        • Getting vaccinated prevents at least 90% of transmission [twitter.com] according to data from the latest studies.

        • You do realize that even getting vaccinated doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting or spreading covid, right?

          Prevent absolutely? No. Reduce the likelihood to an very large extent, yes it does. The vaccination here and its affect on the virus is no different from any other vaccine we have produced in the past. The goal is for the body to fight and destroy the virus during its gestation period, a period where a person is not only asymptomatic but also can't spread the virus. It's what any immune system does when the body is functionally immune to a virus, including immediately after fighting it.

          And even if this were

      • >"I think the initial surge of vaccinations will taper off and the huge percentage of Americans who are skeptical or downright anti-vax will become increasingly apparent as the progress towards herd immunity grinds to a halt."

        I don't. Before we even started vaccinations, we had nearly 50% immunity and near immunity. You are correct that vaccinations will slow down, but I doubt that will happen before we reach 75% immunity and near immunity. Many who are initially skeptical will come around as there is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          I am not normally an optimist, but I don't think [COVID-19 strains will become endemic].

          A recent Nature poll found 89% of immunologists believe it is likely the Covid-19 virus will become endemic. While that is not unanimous (and the outcome wouldn't be certain even if it was), it certainly seems quite likely this disease will be around for the foreseeable future.

          Although that isn't some apocalyptic future. Many of those immunologists believe Covid-19 will be similar to the flu once we have vaccines like we do with the flu. Perhaps hundreds of thousands will die of it each year (like the flu),

          • >"A recent Nature poll found 89% of immunologists believe it is likely the Covid-19 virus will become endemic."

            Sorry, I misread what he wrote, as pandemic (again). I agree it is likely to become endemic, like the regular flu.

            But I also think we will develop a much more effective flu vaccine (using the same technology it will be much more rapid, so we can wait longer in the process and better identify the strains). So, overall, I predict we will have less annual deaths with the combined flu/COVID-19 tha

    • I don't see bragging points in that

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        5 countries beat us by population %, I don't see bragging points in that

        The US is in the top 3% of countries and top 1% by population (one of the countries beating us has about 100,000 people). That is still pretty good. What is with the obsession that you have to be #1 to be proud of an accomplishment?

    • The implied contrast here is with how much worse we did on every previous stage of the pandemic, from acknowledging the problem, to testing, to PPE, and bottom line - to deaths per capita. We were much, much lower than 5th from the best on all of those.

    • Different narrative (Score:5, Informative)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @07:09PM (#61087596) Homepage Journal

      I know I'll get down-modded for this, but it's important to know that there is an alternative narrative available.

      Up to date Covid data is available here [ourworldindata.org].

      It takes a long time to load, but the information is very well presented and allows the user to examine and compare data in various forms. It's collected and presented by Oxford University (in the UK), and so has less of the extreme political bias found in the US.

      The OP article - 10 hours old, as I type this - states that 43.6 million Americans have been vaccinated (one or more doses), but the number is actually over 61 million. For comparison, the number of people in the US over age 65, the cohort with the highest risk, is about 50 million. The US is vaccinating around 1.5 million people per day, with some variation due to weekday/weekends.

      The Covid case fatality rate is US: 1.8%, World: 2.2%, EU: 2.4%, UK: 2.9%.

      By that metric, the US is doing pretty good.

      Vaccinations "new per day", per 100 people (mark the checkbox for this) shows US: 0.51 (vaccinations per 100 people per day), UK: 0.57, and World: 0.04.
      EU data isn't available on that chart, but US and UK are way higher than Germany, France, Spain, or Italy (roughly 0.2 vaccinations per 100 people per day).

      By that metric, the US is doing pretty good.

      I realize that there's a narrative to support here, but it's important to note that there is also an alternative narrative.

      Namely: that comparatively speaking, the US isn't dealing with the Coronavirus that badly.

      • That narrative is bullshit because your numbers are wrong. The case fatality can only be calculated from closed cases.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Not only that, it's affected by how much and what kind of testing you do, and by the demographics of the people getting it. The US has an impressive looking case fatality rate but it's because of a genuinely pretty impressive testing effort, but mostly because the US has more young cases than other countries.

        • Person A: I believe this statement is wrong, and here, here, and here is information that backs up my belief.
          Person B: You're information is bullshit. Just because.

          Who am I more likely to believe?
          You may have a point. But you didn't really make it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hoofie ( 201045 )

        There is a lot of speculation that the UK Fatality rates are skewed heavily towards making the numbers look worse. It uses a mix of measures but in a nutshell either COVID as cause of death or up death up to 28 days AFTER a positive COVID test. This measure was taken specifically so as to not underestimate the death toll but ironically is used to paint the UK as worse than it actually is as countries do not use a common agreed recording mechanism.

      • I realize that there's a narrative to support here, but it's important to note that there is also an alternative narrative.

        Please spare us the sob story. There's no "narrative". There's only facts. And while your facts go into raw numbers they massively ignore the information behind those numbers.

        The USA is doing well with its vaccination program. That is undeniable and one of the only things they have even done partially right. But pointing to the case fatality rate shows the USA in quite disgraceful light. Death rate in the EU is dominated by 3 countries who were hit at a time when we had no clue how to even treat the thing.

    • Re:"Despite"? (Score:5, Informative)

      by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @07:35PM (#61087726)

      If you look at the per capita rate, as mentioned in the block quote, five countries are ahead of us.

      Those numbers are also slightly out of date. The US is now ahead of Bahrain. The current leaderboard is:

      https://ourworldindata.org/cov... [ourworldindata.org]
      Doses/100 people
      1) Israel - 82
      2) Seychelles - 62
      3) UAE - 56
      4) UK - 26
      5) US - 18

      So how did Israel get so many doses? I'm sure we would be far more competent at jabbing people if we had 200 million doses in a warehouse? They organized a cooperation to act as a giant Pfizer population experiment. That's where the new study demonstrating single-dose efficacy comes from and why all of a sudden there are a bunch of articles on vaccine efficacy out of Israel.

      Israel promised to vaccinate its citizens fast and prove whether Pfizer's vaccine can bring herd immunity.

      https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25... [npr.org]

      How did Seychelles get so many doses? The UAE donated enough vaccines from China to vaccinate half of their population after volunteering to use their population as test subjects for China. They are also one of the only locations to approve the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which thanks to Russians being seemingly disinterested in receiving has ample supply, especially for a small wealthy nation that Russia has an interest in bringing into its diplomatic sphere of interest.

      The UK is massively helped ironically by its stumbling and failures. The confusion and chaos from its clinical trials resulted in few countries quickly approving it and meaning the UK got a huge bulk of the initial supply to itself when it approved the vaccine anyway.

      So all in all the US is doing quite well despite being too big to serve as a good location to serve a large scale clinical trial or receive enough doses to benefit from one benevolent benefactor filling a single plane with vaccine.

      • So all in all the US is doing quite well despite being too big to serve as a good location to serve a large scale clinical trial

        Odd thing to say about a country that is comprised of many states of varying population that individually could have been used as very good locations for clinical trials.

        • Re:"Despite"? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @08:22PM (#61087902)

          There are a lot of problems with using a state as a clinical trial.

          1) The US can't close borders between states easily. Effectively people have freedom to travel between states unimpeded. So achieving Herd Immunity within one state would be difficult to prove. A nation can easily seal its borders. What if you have someone who lives in Kansas City, Missouri but works in Kansas City, Kansas? Do you shut down all interstate traffic?

          Without a sealed border a study will be challenging.

          2) It would be a disaster from a political\fairness perspective.

          "We've decided that we will vaccinate every single person in XYZ while every other state\province gets 1/10th of that supply."

          Favoritism at the federal level of that degree would very likely not only look bad but also probably go to the supreme court. "Federal government allocates all of the vaccine supply to battleground state XYZ!"

          3) It might not even be legal with patient privacy law in the US.

          Israel will give Pfizer unspecified "subgroup analyses and vaccine effectiveness analyses, as agreed by the Parties," leaving open the possibility that more personalized categories of data could be delivered.

          4) At least the US isn't possible to participate because our healthcare system is a patchwork disaster of different providers whose systems aren't required to talk to each other. You would ideally need a large country with a central healthcare digital records like the UK or else at least have a centralized records system like Israel.

          Israel really is the sweet spot. It's big enough to offer robust data. It's got a centralized digitized patient records database. It's small enough that diverting vaccines doesn't disrupt global supply. It has some of the most secure borders control in the world. It's apparently willing to just hand over data, privacy be damned (good luck getting so much data out of an EU country to a private company), it's got a massive civil defense\public health infrastructure that can be mobilized to vaccinate quickly and it's got a high enough infection rate that it can be tracked.

          Another good candidate would be a country like Singapore but it's got so few cases that it otherwise wouldn't qualify. However someplace like New Jersey just wouldn't work well. It's a porous border with New York. It would get hung up in legal and ethical battles for months over whether or not the population can be used as an experiment. The data would be opaque and inaccessible because they would have to work through literally tens of thousands of medical providers' separate databases and patient records systems.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hoofie ( 201045 )

        The UK, whilst making the usual cock-up of things, took a massive amount of flak for not signing up to the EU-wide vaccination approach. That decision in the light of day has proven to be somewhat correct considering the absolute and utter dogs breakfast the EU has made of the vaccination plan. Months late and not enough whilst they argued over which Nation State would get the glory and to save a few cents. And then when it all goes wrong blame the UK - again.

    • We -- the world as a whole -- should focus on questions of how to get the vaccine to people more quickly than we are right now. Secondarily we should figure out where those additional vaccines should go. Relative scoring should be ... oh ... about 100th in priority.

      Dunno, I'd be pretty pissed if I found out that we began exporting the vaccine before we had at least 90% of the domestic population vaccinated.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by larwe ( 858929 )
        "Dunno, I'd be pretty pissed if I found out that we began exporting the vaccine before we had at least 90% of the domestic population vaccinated"

        Why? On many levels, this approach you propose is "wrong", for want of a better word. For a single example: Production and wholesale distribution is not the bottleneck in the system - so not just anyone can receive a vaccine, even if there are plenty of doses available in the country and the person is standing at a vaccination center. Suppose you get 1 million do

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          Production and wholesale distribution is not the bottleneck in the system

          Perhaps one reason he would be pissed is if distribution and application of the vaccinations doesn't keep up manufacturing. I am certainly upset that the rollout isn't going better. I would rather hear stories of the US wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on over-preparedness than to hear we aren't administering shots as fast as we can manufacture them.

          In the USA, because of antivaxxers, you're basically never going to get to 90% - especially if, as seems fairly likely, this vaccine is going to need periodic software updates.

          Anti-vaxxers will not keep vaccination levels under 90%. We have vaccination levels of MMR, Hep B, and chickenpox all over 90% in the US even with the an

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by larwe ( 858929 )
            "I would rather hear stories of the US wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on over-preparedness than to hear we aren't administering shots as fast as we can manufacture them."

            Totally agree. But, given that spinning all this stuff up is hard, would you rather hear that the US is letting doses sit on the shelf than shipping them to countries where they will be used? Remember, the last mile is difficult everywhere - but there's also low hanging fruit (urban concentrations) everywhere. It is MUCH easier,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      should focus on questions of how to get the vaccine to people more quickly than we are right now

      That's not possible. Focusing on those questions will interfere with the 'equity' agenda covering vaccine distribution at the moment. We're not going to be able to overcome our bureaucrats micromanagement of supply until a glut of vaccine emerges and their schemes become untenable.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      The US response to the pandemic has been an absolute disaster. The US were basically running at 4 times the per-capita rates of infection as Canada throughout the middle of last year, back when I was checking. The US essentially already had 3 waves, where the rest of the world's had two. But I can't criticize the US vaccine rollout. It's been quite good. I mean, the US needs the vaccines because they basically gave up on all the other ways to fight the virus, and a lot more people died as a result. A f
    • The high rate in USA could be because they have more rich people, who get treated first.

    • The US has vaccinated such a large number of people in part because we have a large population to vaccinate.

      Allow me to elucidate you...

      BIG number of people takes BIG number of time to vaccinate. Because when number of time is BIG, things move SLOW.

      USA currently vaccinating BIGGER number of people than the number expected - ergo things moving FASTER than SLOW.
      Thus, "despite" BIG number of people, USA moving FASTER than SLOW. And even FASTER than NORMAL - i.e. E.U.

      All of that showing that once the terrorist traitors are out of the White House - things actually get done.
      Imagine getting terrorists out of other branc

  • Actually, that's mostly lacking perspective. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Normalisation needed.

    America has X times more vaccination centres than other countries, so yes, they're going to vaccinate more people.

    Now normalise that against other countries, by the number of vaccination centres.

    And you'll get a far more average figure, and then you can compare to how far other countries are ahead, and therefore work out the actual efficiency of the vaccination centres in the US (it's not great)

    • Agreed. I found it to be a pretty crappy article, including the "crumbling infrastructure" sideways swipe at the end, despite Axios stated policy of excellence and accuracy. Better to just read the original article.

      • It's kind of damning with faint praise, or a backhanded compliment. But it would take it because in WW-II we proved it, and we proved it now.

    • Correcting for the number of vaccination centers isn't going to produce much better numbers. A country with low population density would be expected to utilize more centers serving fewer people, while a dense area or one with strong public transit will use fewer centers with more people per center.

      The correct way to look at the numbers, as it has been through the entire pandemic, is per capita. When comparing two strategies, be they bounded by nation, province, or arbitrary experimental group, divide in the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Per capita makes a lot of sense though. Otherwise you could get nonsense like claiming a small country with 100% vaccination is lower ranked because a country 10 times larger is at 20%.

    • That's absurd, things like rolling out vaccination centers are the whole point. If you 'correct' for what you are actually trying to measure you have lost the plot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uncqual ( 836337 )

      Why would one rank countries that didn't bother to create vaccine centers higher than those that did?

      The number of vaccine centers is also pretty irrelevant as they are not the only way to get the vaccine injected.

      "Per capita" numbers make a lot more sense - although even those can be a bit misleading. The US appears to be fifth in that metric - behind Israel (9M population), Seychelles (97K population), the UAE (9.8M population), the U.K (67M population), and Bahrain (1.6M population). The largest of the f

  • Despite the best efforts of politicians, you mean. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mosb1000 ( 710161 ) <mosb1000@mac.com> on Sunday February 21, 2021 @04:49PM (#61087120)

    That last line should read: "Despite the best efforts of politicians, the U.S. remains a scientific, technological and manufacturing powerhouse."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Njovich ( 553857 )

      Reality is that there was just 1 of those vaccines mostly created in the US (Moderna). The US making political deals with all the major vaccine manufacturers (and Europe being to slow on that) is the only reason US is above Europe here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 )

        It turns out that the EU was not slower than the UK [cnn.com] after all (contract was even signed one day earlier), both contracts are based on "best effort", and both contain clauses that other contracts won't impede delivery. Not sure why AstraZenica is keeping the EU less well supplied than the UK and is completely making up all excuses to explain why this is.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hoofie ( 201045 )

          Perhaps because the EU didn't read the contract properly whilst the UK nailed AstraZenica's balls to the desk. UK Contract Law is very, very specific and black and white : European law [e.g. Belgium, France etc], based on the Napoleonic system, isn't.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          You're not sure why AstraZenica is favouring the UK in its rollout of Oxford's vaccine?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        Much as most hate to admit It was the former president that got the contracts for the vaccine signed and delivery expedited even when the vaccine was still being developed

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 )

      USA: 1 Vaccine.

      Russia: 3 Vaccines - 3 different technologies - recombinant virus, recombinant protein only and inactivated.

      China: 1 Vaccine and 2 more in final stages of approval. Again 3 different technologies, just in different order - inactivated, 2 x recombinant virus.

      UK: 2 Vaccines.

      What exactly is powerhouse here? Even UK did better.

      Aaaaaghhh.. I know what is it power house in. Public relations and media management. The number of f*cking squirrels and dead cats last year was mind boggling. "They

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        Considering reports of data intrusions by Russian and Chinese hackers I would consider their vaccines had western "help". the west should really tighten data security

      • USA: 1 Vaccine.

        Russia: 3 Vaccines - 3 different technologies - recombinant virus, recombinant protein only and inactivated.

        China: 1 Vaccine and 2 more in final stages of approval. Again 3 different technologies, just in different order - inactivated, 2 x recombinant virus.

        UK: 2 Vaccines.

        Actually the US has produced a number of vaccines that are being used in other countries; that figure you're pulling only looks at what has been approved for use within the US. Unfortunately, the standards that the FDA requires for approval are super high, which often means that while the US is the first to produce a lot of medical technologies and medicines, we're rarely ever the first to actually get to use it.

        For the time being, I'm satisfied that we have a vaccine that has a far greater efficacy than th

  • Rate per Population is what Matters (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @04:49PM (#61087122) Journal
    It's not the total number of doses but the fraction of the population that matters otherwise China, with the largest population, will be the ultimate winner. In that, the US is doing worse than the UK but far better than Canada. Although the reason we are doing so badly here is that our PM was very slow to sign contracts with vaccine manufacturers putting us at the back of the queue and he specifically stipulated that vaccines should come from European plants because he was worried that the US would block exports.

    I don't blame him for the EU vs US choice given the strong protectionist turn the US has taken in recent years but coming so late to the table to sign supply contracts is entirely Trudeau's fault and the major reason for the slow rollout.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      The USA is doing pretty well in that regard too. I believe they are 4th behind Israel, UAE, and the UK.

      • From the summary: The U.S. has ... given a first dose to a higher percentage of its population (12%) than all but five countries: Israel, the Seychelles, the UAE, the U.K. and Bahrain.

        • And the UAE donated some of their vaccine to the Seychelles so those two are kind of one and the same and represent. Not to mention, the Seychelles have 100k population.

          A cynic would say the UAE royalty donated 50k vaccines to the Seychelles to re-open their favorite yachting beach destination. ..

    • I don't blame him for the EU vs US choice given the strong protectionist turn the US has taken in recent years

      Israel is #1 for vaccinations in the world and relying primarily on their US based Pfizer vaccine contract, same as Canada.

      Canada is currently only receiving vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. Same as the US.

      They spread out their orders more than the US or Israel though. However most of the other top countries above the US also are receiving very nationalist developed vaccines from Russia and China.

      • Israel is #1 for vaccinations in the world and relying primarily on their US based Pfizer vaccine contract, same as Canada.

        Canada is not getting any of the Pfizer vaccine from US-based plants, it is all coming from Europe because the government was more concerned about the US cutting exports than the EU doing so.

  • Export ban (Score:4, Interesting)

    by javacowboy ( 222023 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @04:58PM (#61087144)

    Remember the US maintains an export ban on vaccine,

  • The US has 510,784 less people to vaccinate.
    https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

    • The US has 510,784 less people to vaccinate. https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

      Even fewer now in Texas. :-)

      (too soon?)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        At least the US count is more believable than for instance China. The US has tested twice as much for a 1/4 of the population wouldn't you like to see the true counts done in the same metric for other countries. Then there a cover ups by governments at all levels more prevalent in some countries

  • Why "Despite" ?!
    Why would a large country vaccinate fewer people ?
    Or does the writer have some personal meaning of despite that makes sense here ?

    And: Editors: EDIT !!!

  • Why can't I get a vaccine? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @05:25PM (#61087246)
    There's a vaccination site at a park two miles from my apartment. They prioritize persons of age and health care workers and whatnot. That's logical, proper, and I don't have any issue with that, at all.

    What I do have an issue with, is that this vaccination site, has been a ghost-town for two months now. All the "essential" persons have already received their vaccines from this site, so I don't understand why I can't just go in an get the vaccine. Clearly, they have the vaccine, but it's now "just sitting there".

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      It can't be just sitting there, it has a short shelf life. It must be getting allocated to other centers that are still packed.

    • Clearly, they have the vaccine

      How is that clear? If I put up a tent and write vaccine on it, does it magically get doses?

  • Joe Biden... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who was vaccinated twice, said there's no vaccine. Harris, who was also vaccinated, says there's no vaccine. So clearly this shit outlet -- that told me CEOs are the fourth branch of the government, are liars.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Credit where credit is due (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Sunday February 21, 2021 @06:10PM (#61087412)

    So the decision by Trump to manufacture the vaccines domestically rather than throwing in with the EU or another country was correct?? I remember the day that Trump said no to that!

    It would also indicate that the criticisms from political candidates on the left were outright wrong - that there was no plan to distribute vaccines. Because obviously there was.

    It does not foretell a positive future if you have to rely on dishonesty to win your campaign.

    • >"It would also indicate that the criticisms from political candidates on the left were outright wrong - that there was no plan to distribute vaccines. Because obviously there was."

      We were already distributing and injecting something like 1,000,000 doses per day before Biden's inauguration. And by that time, 16.5 million doses had already been administered and was ramping up quickly.

      And those clamming about "per capita"- the USA is far ahead of vaccinations, per capita, of every country of ONE QUARTER o

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • As others have pointed out, "despite" is an odd word the TFA and summary to use. I'll pile on...

    Despite crumbling infrastructure ...

    It's almost as if our infrastructure isn't quite so crumbled as those who want to sign contracts with their political supporters would have you believe. Funny that.

    It's also almost as if all our crumbling roads, bridges, airports, and water systems, the infrastructure we spend $400 billion a year to improve, still actually work pretty well.

  • I work an ESSENTIAL JOB at an ESSENTIAL BUSINESS that REQUIRES me to show up 40 hours a week or more depending on whether there's an emergency or not, yet I don't 'qualify' for the gods-be-damned vaccine? Really?

  • The Biontech vaccine was "developed" in Germany. It's stupid to push nationalism on vaccines, all vaccine technology relies on technology invented in multiple countries by people from different nations -- like it or not.

  • The 'Experts' predicted we wouldn't have a vaccine in 2020.
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politic... [go.com]

    • Trump deserves credit for the vaccine because he let the situation get so bad that they had to loosen testing requirements a bit to get vaccine candidates approved quicker?

      Why don't you also credit Japan for creating nuclear bombs because their war machine made it necessary?

  • I'd be interested to know how effective an immunity these vaccines confer against all the various strains. Also, for how long.

    Another interesting number to know would be how many of these Americans have received the 3rd jab, as has been floated by Gates recently.

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