Jay Weber Show transcript 1-12-21 7:40am
My friends... I was among the first ...several weeks ago...to report that blue state governors-and our own Tony Evers-were screwing up the distribution of this covid-19 vaccine.
Now- it is general knowledge in the states, and it has governors like Evers scrambling to find scapegoats.
And make no mistake: this is not going according to plan because it is people like Governor Evers calling the shots now.
The news reports from-left wing- news outlet across the country make it clear this is a lack of planning on the parts of governor Cuomo, and governor Pritzker, and governor Newsome, and governor Whitmer and many others- who had months to come up with solid distribution strategies and didn’t.
And so-on Friday-we saw the slimy Tony Evers and some of these other blue-state governors try to blame the feds...claiming they weren’t getting enough doses-
But we know that’s an excuse-because none of these states have used up the doses that they already have.
In our case-Evers’ team hasn’t injected more than 50 percent of the -initial number of doses-into people’s arms. We’ve had those doses sitting around in freezers since before Christmas.
It’s now mid-January and not even half of them have been injected into people’s arms.
And so -the slowdown is not due to a lack of doses. For heaven’s sake- doses are spoiling in New York State because Andrew Cuomo has some asinine litmus test on who is ‘most worthy’ to get the vaccine-and only the worthy can currently get it.
The plan should be: get it into people’s arms...prioritizing as much as you can. But get it-out there.
And so-it was against this backdrop that governor Evers claimed for the first time in public yesterday that we, in the general public, won’t be able to get this vaccine until June.
Are you kidding me?
And as he said it-he tried to blame the feds again.
“In a state where our statewide mitigation strategies have been struck down and challenged time and time again, it is absolutely critical that Wisconsin get additional doses of vaccine to meet demand and box in the virus.”
Let me stop there to hammer home the point one more time: half of those health care workers and nursing home residents could be vaccinated by now.There are 500-thousands of them-and we’ve had about 210-thousand doses of this vaccine since Christmas and have been shipped a total of 260-thousand overall. And Evers’ great planners have doled out about a third of those doses so far. That’s it.Evers started with 260-thousand doses... He’s got about 70-thousand into arms and he’s still sitting on about 190-thousand doses. How in the heck does that mean the feds are to blame?
This is all excuse making.
Especially when -according to Steil and Baldwin- Evers’ told them back in December that his plan was a pathetically slow one. It’s interesting that we are just learning this now
That is an unacceptable timeline when other states are already thru their health care workers and nursing homes and onto phase two.
This is an unacceptably slow timeline- when essential workers and people with chronic conditions have to wait until May or June before their governor and his health department will even consider them a priority.
Everyone should be alarmed that that is the timeline Gov Evers has in his head.No wonder his people are going at such a plodding pace.
They think they have until April or May to get all health care workers, older folks, and first responders vaccinated. What’s the rush?
No wonder there is no alarm that distribution in Wisconsin is moving at such a snail’s pace.
If republicans don’t hop on this and demand better-they will be missing a huge opportunity to help Wisconsinites get their vaccines quicker...and missing a huge political opportunity, as well.
Evers and his team are botching this up-and if this were a GOP administration- they’d be flogged in the public square-daily-by the very democrats and media accomplices who are giving Evers a complete pass so far.
It has to be two weeks ago, already, that Ron Bishop suggested Gov Evers should have asked Tommy Thompson to orchestrate our vaccine distribution. Former governor. Former HHS secretary. Currently running the UW system brilliantly. The guy is the best coordinator and administrator in Wisconsin and would have loved to help.
And we don’t have to guess. Even though Thompson hasn’t been asked- once the suggestion was made, he, Thompson- stepped up and made a very logical and reasonable suggestion:that the u-w system help coordinate injections because campuses are sprinkled all over the state and have been large covid-19 testing sites, anyway. They’re already operating as testing sites.
Contrast that to Tony Evers-who is saying he won’t even get to most people until June!!
Come on...
Even if tommy’s timeline is aggressive- Evers’ is pathetic.
That is infuriating.
Now---maybe Evers’ hyper partisan team of socialists worried that asking tommy or someone else for outside help would have made Evers look incompetent....
But even so-the fact that it never even dawned on them to use the UW campuses and these testing sites as vaccination centers indicates just how little Evers and his team-really- thought about a distribution plan.
Because that’s a natural.
Think about it: you’ve got a former governor and HHS secretary-in your state as a resource-
And one that is pretty much beyond playing politics. He just wants to be of service in his retirement years-
And Evers never even thinks to use him.It tells you how little thought Tony Evers and his team have given to-any-real planning and strategizing here.
And they should be called out for it. This is government incompetence in its most basic form.
And it is the sort of incompetence that we get over, and over, and over again from democrat administrations, governors, and presidents.
And if you doubt me- stay tuned-
We will talk about the rank incompetence that we are seeing out of Newsome, Cuomo, and blue state governors in other STATES, TOO.
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