At the first presidential debate of the 2020 general election, President Donald Trump tried to reassure viewers about his Covid-19 response by promising that he’s ready to distribute a vaccine: “We have the military all set up. Logistically, they’re all set up. We have our military that delivers soldiers, and they can do 200,000 a day. They’re going to be delivering the vaccine.”
In reality, this would be a paltry amount of vaccine distribution. At a rate of 200,000 vaccinations a day, it’d take more than 1,650 days — nearly five years — to vaccinate the entire country. If everyone needs two doses, which could be the case with the first generation of vaccines, it would take more than nine years.
Presumably, Trump was saying the military would play a supplementary role to other efforts, with hospitals, family physicians, pharmacies, and others distributing the vaccine alongside the military. But if the military piece is really the highlight of Trump’s plan, the math shows it’s so little it shouldn’t reassure anyone.
Trump also claimed that the US will have a vaccine in the coming […]
Intelligent epidemiologists say it always takes 9-12 months to come up with a viable solution to any flu or virus; especially this new Covid-19 virus which is not like anything they have ever seen.