Scott Gottlieb is predicting by April we'll have enough vaccines in the US for anyone to be able to get one. Would be pretty amazing.
https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1358766421531111427
I’m going to strongly disagree on this. You have to think of everything on 3 or 4 week rotation depending on the vaccine. For easy of comparison, let’s just round it up a month and use my store as an example:
January: 1st Doses for 75+
February: 2nd Doses for 75+, limited 1st doses for 65+
March: 2nd Doses for some 65+, Limited 1st doses for 65+ and maybe pre-existing conditions
April: 2nd Doses, limited 1st doses
We are still doing 75+. There is still a ton of demand for that age group but we may start opening it up for 65+. For our first cycle we didn’t max out our appointments, so now that we are we have limited 1st doses for people. If we had started off more aggressive, all we would be doing this month would be 2nd doses.
Realistically in February we will barely touch the demand for 65+ and will likely need much of March and April to get that age group both doses. The two dose series and limited capacity will limit the speed of how quickly we can move through age groups.
An optimistic estimate for open access would be mid-summer.
There’s high expectations for the role of community pharmacies on ramping up these numbers and chains are making unrealistic goals that are going to lead to chaos. Currently they’re working to spread out vaccines to a large chunk of the pharmacies. I expect there to be big hiccups that might even lead to a decrease in daily doses given. You’ll see an increased gap in doses allocated and doses given because you’re redistributing vaccine from highly efficient locations like the PODs and clinics and putting them into inefficient and inexperienced locations.
Eventually it might work but it will take flexibility that most major chains will not be willing to do.