Today’s entry: Since Florida went for Trump and the Dems are mad about that and there were calls for Floridians to pay, is it possible that they are sending more vaccines to states that went to Biden over red states?
Bottom Line: It’s a question which without evidence to the contrary I don’t believe to be the case, but is it possible? It’s notable that at one of the earliest pressers with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, she made a false and misleading comment that Florida didn’t need more vaccines because they’d only administered half of what they had.
This was the natural byproduct of Florida having been a national leader in its vaccination program through the first month of the vaccine rollout. Once a first dose is administered, a 2nd dose is allocated for Floridians who’d been administered first doses. During that waiting period, those doses are on hand, but aren’t available for use by anyone other than those they’ve been allocated for.
There was a significant decline in first dose vaccines into Florida during the first two weeks of the Biden administration. The week of February 7th, there were 274,882 vaccines administered.
While last week was the best week of the Biden administration thus far for first dose vaccinations into Florida, it was still 113,059 vaccinations, or 29%, below the peak week, over a month ago. It’s frustrating and it is confounding. The longer we go into the national vaccination rollout, the more efficiently the program should be. There’s no clear explanation as to why Florida’s supply of vaccines has taken a nosedive.
So, how have Florida’s trends with COVID vaccines compared with other states? Are we potentially being treated differently than other states? Could politics be behind it? The answer is yes to one of those questions and maybe to the other. In Florida’s peak week for vaccines, we received 387,941 vaccines out of 5,590,949 issued nationally.
Last week, a total of 11,673,417 vaccines were made available nationally. Florida only received 274,882. That’s a population adjusted decline of 66% under the Biden administration and is well below our state’s relative share which is approximately 6.7%. It’s a fact that Florida had received COVID vaccines on a schedule relative to our population size during the Trump administration. It’s a fact that Florida is only receiving about 34% of its share relative to population under the Biden administration. It’s also a fact that the Biden administration made a false and misleading statement regarding Florida’s use of vaccines in its earliest days. Is politics behind the Biden administration’s pitiful issuance of vaccines to Florida? I don’t know. Is it possible? Yes.
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Parler & Twitter: @brianmuddradio
Photo by: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images