My Best Guess on Vaccine Allocations to States Being Cut

I wrote the following while everyone was waiting and evaluating the different messages coming out of the administration as to why virus doses being allocated to states were being cut as much as 40-50 percent. On Saturday, there was this, "'I am responsible': Warp Speed chief accepts blame for reduced vaccine doses but creates new confusion about quality control steps." Nice to see someone standing up and saying a Mea Culpa. That seems to be rare in these days. He said that not because he personally made the mistake, but the organization he leads made the mistake and thus "he is responsible." Rare indeed!

I'll also say that what I wrote earlier in the weekend (below) is still a plausible scenario, but not in the amounts originally thought.

Conjecture on my part!

I do believe that the military logistics effort to distribute vaccines to states was well-planned. They got the number of vaccines available, they had an agreement to distribute based on population and vaccines available, and they announced those numbers to the states.

So why now are some states saying they have been notified that their allocation is being reduced?

This is my best guess, because I've seen this happen before in my personal experience. 

People and organizations don't start paying attention to the issue, in this case vaccine distribution, until that distribution becomes "real" and imminent. Then, I expect the emails and phone calls started with each person and organization raising their hand to say they needed to get some of those vaccines and get them ASAP!

These could be normal government officials, they could be special interest groups with "influence," etc. I've heard the number of "essential workers" is at 80 million nationally. Perhaps football players are now essential? Might we hit 100 million essential workers by the time we are done?

It might not be huge numbers from any one entity asking for the vaccines, but pile them up and they start to make a significant dent in the total vaccines being sent to states — per the original plan. 

I'll stand by to see if this is what plays out — and becomes public.