Healthcare

CVS and Walgreens have come under fire from local officials for the slow rollout of their vaccinations program to nursing homes. As of January 14, around a quarter of the 4.7 million doses allocated to the companies had been administered CNN reported. TJ Crawford, a spokesperson for CVS, told Insider that the process is going entirely to plan. Both companies told CNN they are on track to have the first round of the two-phase vaccine completed by January 25. But health officials in some states have said that the process has been frustratingly slow.

The effort to get Americans vaccinated has been "extremely poor" and hampered by avoidable setbacks, experts have told Newsweek. However, some states, like West Virginia and North Dakota, have emerged as relative outliers as the country struggles to hit targets. Thanks in part to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's COVID vaccine and treatment funding program, vaccines have been developed in record time, and distribution has gone relatively well, according to academics. But the country has tripped up at arguably the most important hurdle: administering the shots that will protect people from COVID.

Even though we are slowly beginning to get the vaccine for Covid-19, we are encouraged to continue to wear our masks and stay in our bubble as often as possible  to help keep us safe and healthy. Dr. Julie Swann, professor with North Carolina State University, joined Wilson to talk about the latest on Covid-19 & why it’s time to upgrade your mask and stay in your bubble. Dr. Julie Swann is the department head and Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State. Professor Swann has also served as the science advisor for pandemic response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Dr. Swann has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Vox, and USA Today.

One takeaway from the past year is that many people who think they can model coronavirus infections and deaths often cannot. There’s the Cornell professor who predicted 1,200 cases at the Ivy League university, but wound up off by 66%, since the total amount through December 31 came out closer to 400. Now meet Sheldon Jacobson, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In June, he predicted up to seven college football players would die from COVID. “I guarantee someone is going to die,” Jacobson said in June, according to CBS Sports. “The virus does not discriminate.” But no one died during the college football season that ended earlier this week.

At least three lawmakers who sheltered in a secure room during last week’s storming of the Capitol said they have since tested positive for Covid-19, adding to fears about the virus’s spread during the attack. The lawmakers, all Democrats, said they had fled during the attack to the room where Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks. A video posted by Punchbowl News shows Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D., Del.) in the room offering masks to a group of House Republicans, who decline to put them on. The Capitol’s physician told lawmakers and staff this weekend that those who were in the room might have been exposed to someone infected with Covid-19.

One of the world’s leading experts on getting supplies to catastrophe survivors likens the nation’s struggle to get Americans vaccinated against Covid-19 to an understaffed grocery store. “From a supply chain perspective, you’ve got the production, you’ve got the distribution, it’s on the shelves and there is demand,” Philip J. Palin told NBC News. “But you don’t have enough check-out lanes and you don’t have enough checkers.” And Palin would know. The former National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine consultant and author of books like "Out of the Whirlwind: Demand and Supply After Hurricane Maria" is also the son and grandson of grocers.

John Hopkins Carey Business School professor, Tinglong Dai, on the federal government’s announcement that they are allowing states to vaccinate anyone over 65 and those with preexisting conditions.

Clay Travis: “This was the most irresponsible single piece of journalism having to do with college football that was published anywhere in the country. CBS Sports should apologize to their entire audience because they wrote a piece based on University of Illinois computer science professional Sheldon Jacobson saying ‘I guarantee someone is going to die if they play a college football season.’ He also said the FBS level would see ‘3-7 deaths’. ‘A few of them could end up in a hospital and you’ll have a small number who could die. I don’t want to sugarcoat it for you, I just want to give you the facts’… IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

The race is on to curb the spread of Covid-19 and protect the health-care services in the United States from being overrun. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar announced today that the government will no longer hold vaccine stocks in reserve for Americans’ second doses. More vaccine supply seems like a good idea, but the decision is risky. Azar’s decision puts him in agreement with President-elect Joe Biden, who had already planned to release the stockpile after the Inauguration next week. The two vaccines authorized in the U.S. both require recipients to get a second shot within a few weeks of the first one, and Azar had previously said that due to concerns over manufacturing and the risk of undermining public confidence, it was better to to hold back half of the doses. That, apparently, has changed.

Every day, news broadcasts in Illinois and around the country report new COVID-19 cases and deaths. These broadcasts play out like a horror movie, with progressively worse outcomes each day and new records being set. At some point, most people become insensitive to all the bad numbers reported, except those like health care workers in the trenches treating COVID-19 patients, or morticians managing COVID-19 deaths. They need no news reports to tell them the state of COVID-19.