Shades of 1976

Typical shitty Cook County government response:

• A Cook County Department of Public Health website that collected information for potential COVID-19 vaccine distribution raised confusion Monday as the department twice changed its guidance about who was eligible to use the site.

  A survey on the website initially appeared to be open to all Cook County residents, and many filled it out over the weekend and on Monday, thinking it might help them understand when it would be their turn to receive vaccines. But county health department spokesman Don Bolger told the Tribune early Monday afternoon that the survey was intended only for some health care workers.

Surpassed by Groot's crappy Department of Health efforts:

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot called on President-elect Joe Biden to deliver significantly more COVID-19 vaccines to Chicago and other cities or face a drawn out pandemic that will last well into 2022.

  Lightfoot, at a media event showcasing the first five Chicago health care workers receiving their second doses of vaccine, said that the rate of distribution to cities is way too slow and added that it will take Chicago almost a year and a half to vaccinate all the city’s residents unless things speed up.
  

There are federal protocols for mass inoculations - which Putzger, Prickwrinkle and Groot have refused to follow because they know better or something.....they know what class of voter will respond better to being first in line. Which of course, results in typical government efficiency:

• Less than 30% of the COVID-19 vaccines shipped to Chicago so far have made it into the arms of people who actually live in the city.

  Moderna and Pfizer have shipped a collective 124,425 doses to Chicago as of Dec. 28, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An additional 32,000 doses are expected to arrive this week.

  But just 36,531 of the doses shipped here have been injected into the arms of people living in Chicago zip codes, the data show. The remaining 87,894 doses were either given to non-city residents who work in Chicago, or are sitting in a freezer waiting to be administered.

We've heard (but haven't confirmed) that the prisoners in Cook County jail are getting shots before nurses at Stroger.

Is it any wonder that this is happening?

• Large percentages of health care workers in multiple states have said they would not take the COVID-19 vaccine, with some citing a distrust of the political machinations behind the timeline of the vaccine’s creation.

  The New York Post reported Friday that health care works in California, New York City, Ohio, and Texas are refusing to take the vaccine in large numbers. The workers are citing skepticism that the vaccine would work without side effects given how quickly it was developed and approved.

But then again, maybe old timers (like us) remember this from 1976:

• MIKE WALLACE: The flu season is upon us. Which type will we worry about this year, and what kind of shots will we be told to take? Remember the swine flu scare of 1976? That was the year the U.S. government told us all that swine flu could turn out to be a killer that could spread across the nation, and Washington decided that every man, woman and child in the nation should get a shot to prevent a nation-wide outbreak, a pandemic.
  
  Well 46 million of us obediently took the shot, and now 4,000 Americans are claiming damages from Uncle Sam amounting to three and a half billion dollars because of what happened when they took that shot. By far the greatest number of the claims - two thirds of them are for neurological damage, or even death, allegedly triggered by the flu shot.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? No wonder the vaccine companies demanded (and received) absolute immunity from any side effects their shot might cause.