(Keith Olbermann) hated Donald Trump when hating Donald Trump wasn’t cool.
My credentials date back to Dec. 15, 1983, when CNN sent me to cover a public forum featuring the moguls of four New York sports teams. One of them, the newly minted proprietor of the long-forgotten New Jersey Generals, got up and spoke interminable nonsense for what felt like 20 minutes.
He promised the signing of superstar players he would never sign. He announced the hiring of immortal coaches he would never hire. He scheduled a news conference the next day to confirm all of it, and the next day never came.
As I finished recording one-on-one interviews with the three other owners, George Steinbrenner, Sonny Werblin and Fred Wilpon, he emerged from the darkness and began answering questions into my microphone before I asked any. He repeated his boasts of future glory, but this time he mentioned an entirely different set of coaches and players than he had from the podium. As we helped the crew pack up to head back to our newsroom, I said to my equally flummoxed producer, “What the hell was wrong with that Trump guy?”
I have some seniority on this topic.
I was there nearly at the beginning of the Great Hate, I have twice quit lucrative sinecures in sports to create pro bono video series warning against Mr. Trump, and now I am here with everybody else watching “Impeachment in Absentia” and wondering if we will ever get the opportunity to exorcise the enmity.
As obscenely insufficient as it sounds, the only real consequence of this second trial might be the unofficial termination of Mr. Trump’s political life. Senator Lisa Murkowski’s tepid Wednesday guess — “I don’t see how Donald Trump could be re-elected to the presidency again” — might be the closest thing to a tangible result.
Far more than the outcome of the trial was predetermined: Anybody on either side could have mapped the play-by-play with precision. Whomever you support, it has gone exactly as you expected it would.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who seemingly rotate as frequently and stumblingly as those imaginary football stars and coaches he told me he would steal 38 years ago, have fabricated the useful phantasm of “unconstitutionality.” It has provided Republican senators with an excuse to watch video of themselves and their colleagues nearly being captured and killed by a mob, and yet still say that was truly horrible but it’s just a shame we don’t have jurisdiction against an ex-president and oh by the way didn’t those impeachment managers do a great and solemn job and see I said something nice about Democrats therefore I’m for unity unlike that Biden guy.
If that’s all we get, what happens to the hate?
Since 2015, we Trump haters have at least structured this calculation in our mind: If he would just disappear, we might call it even. The baseline human want created by Trump Ubiquity has been the discontinuation of Trump Ubiquity. Even Mr. Trump’s own campaign post-mortem indicated that beyond the pandemic bungling, his loss owed in part to the sheer exhaustion of his voters.
But the more important need is one that moves along a very wide spectrum from revenge to prosecution to justice, to be enacted in public and on television, with both his henchmen and our battered psyches as witnesses. This itself has to some degree been precluded by the absence of the star witness. Not only did Mr. Trump remain in exile at Elba-Lago, but he was smart to do so. His attorneys needed to stick to their one-word script, and as may have come to your attention, Mr. Trump does not.
Yet we too are sticking to a script, as celebrants in the impeachment managers’ bid to win the hearts and minds of jurors who have not shown ownership of either. Mr. Trump may have railed against it and had his surrogates fight it, but the trial has given a new spotlight to an attention addict whose rehab was not going well. He is not there, but this is still “The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump,” about Donald J. Trump, featuring applause for Donald J. Trump, and starring Donald J. Trump as Donald J. Trump. His ego and his coffers need you to watch, to tweet, to rage.
So do you not watch, to enlarge the collective spiting of him? Do you give oxygen to an amoral human torch? The Resistance did not create or empower Mr. Trump. But we did make the classic first mistake of concluding that our insights, analysis and morality would convince his supporters that they were tragically wrong. When that failed, we made the classic second mistake of assuming we hadn’t made our first mistake loudly or clearly enough. I’m not ready to believe that we started it, but I, for one, have gotten loud and blasphemous enough to peel the paint off my walls.
Still, we cannot underestimate the power of righteous and organic hatred to overwhelm everything else. It is hard to fathom now, but in the epic sitcom “All in the Family,” one of the best running jokes consisted entirely of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker getting in the face of Bea Arthur’s Maude Findlay and announcing the identity of the worst president in history. He would elongate it and he would mispronounce it and when he would intone “Fraaaaanklin. Delllllano. Roooooooosevelt!”; she would erupt in paroxysms of liberal rage at his heresy.
These political passion plays were performed some 25 years after Roosevelt died, and were thus a real-time testament to something the half century since has erased: Beloved and revered as he may have been, F.D.R. was also passionately hated and blamed, and his memory alone could start political fistfights into at least the 1970s.
One wonders if the visceral hatred of Mr. Trump will end that soon. Or if it ever will. …
Why does the ongoing Senate Trial remind me so of the OJ Simpson Trial?
At the time, I lived by Lake Merrit in Oakland, CA. Walked around the Lake almost every day for ten years; got to know and talk to lots of my black neighbors. I’ll never forget the days of the trial; its effect on my black friends.
I’m not about to pretend that I like, am a friend of, the Lilliputian Senate Republicans, but I think I know why that the Senate Trial of Trump reminds me of the OJ Trial.
What kind of ratings — TV and cultural — will the post-impeachment period produce? The most compelling television political coverage ever was either of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, or of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings of 1973. The latter probably wins for its longevity and plot twists. But both provide a template if any of our leaders actually want to indelibly burn into the retinas of history the full story of the insurrection.
No matter how much you or I might think the anti-Trump side is right, these earlier investigations were not choreographed and nearly scripted exchanges between accusers and excusers. And they did not begin and end with video packages of the incitements and the crimes, no matter how searingly effective and unforgettably produced they might have been.
The McCarthy and Watergate hearings were unfocused, exploratory and certainly organic investigations. The revelations, the shock, the urgency of action and the opposing camps were slowly built, not built-in.
Would the hate be better addressed and the nation be better served by a long and meticulous public investigation into the attack on the Capitol or even the entire Trump presidency, shaped something like the Watergate hearings, the Army-McCarthy hearings and the 9/11 commission? Or are the wounds too new to be thoroughly reopened? If we’d had television and Ken Burns then, would his “The Civil War” documentary have been a must-watch in 1866? Of course, there is already historical revisionism about Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 conspirators. Any sense that we might be too quick to relive the nightmare must confront the reality that the proverbial first draft of history often becomes the final version with only minor edits.
Ultimately, if this latest spasm in the greatest-ever threat to democracy doesn’t ease the hate, it will not be because we who loathe Mr. Trump are exhausted or traumatized or healing. It may be because even if 17 Republican senators were now to shock the world, there’s really nothing they can do to Donald Trump that we would feel would suffice.
The only thing we actually want to watch is the criminal trials. In which case, the worldwide popcorn shortage might be an extinction-level event.
Inside the race to develop a vaccine for our other pandemic: Hate
A little-noticed group of government-funded researchers is
developing a clever inoculation against the disinformation
and violence threatening American democracy…
NY Times – Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo – February 11
We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.
But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.
That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.
Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity. …
I carefully posted a set of important New York Times articles explaining the tragic way that state nursing homes have been subject to the coronavirus. There were thousands of needless deaths and many more infections that were policy driven. The references were clear and self-explanatory and important for New York and other states in terms of policy. The post I set down was precisely referenced, completely clear and important if understanding thousands of needless deaths is important. However, the post was deleted. I do not begin to understand the deletion and evident meanness.
I carefully posted a set of important New York Times articles explaining the tragic way that state nursing homes have been subject to the coronavirus. There were thousands of needless deaths and many more infections that were policy driven. The references were clear and self-explanatory and important for New York and other states in terms of policy.The post I set down was precisely referenced, completely clear and important if understanding thousands of needless deaths is important. However, the post was deleted.I do not begin to understand the meanness of the deletion.
Anne AB is experiencing problems with new “program”. There is no spite. I put “program” in quotes because I don’t know what to call new-days interface between computer and man. I suspect some day a “programming” glitch will end the world as we know it.
The irony is that while the deleted post was perfectly spaced, my complaint even though I was as careful lost the spacing and was double posted for whatever mysterious reason.
Comment: remind me so of the OJ Simpson Trial? “ ~~Ken Melvin~
thanks for the reminder Ken! I can remember when all that hit the headlines. I think it was just about the time when one of my cousins was born, about the turn of the century. I had taken a cab in Manhattan. Arabic guy picked me up and just to make conversation, “do you think he done it”?
Arabic guy says “we’ll have to wait until the verdict is pronounced by the jury. if the jury says he was innocent then you’ll know he did it, but if the jury says he’s guilty you know that he didn’t have enough power to shake off the frame jobby. But if Jury say he’s innocent that means he was not framed, he did it. when F Lee Bailey read about it in the paper or heard it on the radio he called his limousine driver, told him to go buy a glove medium size that would be too small to fit on the hand of OJ then throw that glove into the blood when the police were looking the other way at the scene of the crime it’s that simple.
Bout then, I used to get soup at a restaurant on College Ave in Oakland for the conversation with the Egyptian owner who told me more than once that Egyptian Cab Drivers knew much more about Russia than the CIA; knew more about everything than the CIA. I believed him, mostly. Ipso, Justin are you sure about the Manhattan Cabbie’s ethnicity?
Hospital leaders and physicians expressed dismay on Friday at the Baker administration’s decision to halt vaccine distribution to hospitals and primary care offices, saying it could undercut efforts to reach minority communities and reluctant patients.
But the state’s top health official said that hospitals were scheduling more vaccine appointments than the state could meet with the current level of supplies.
“We all need to understand that we have a limited supply,” said Marylou Sudders, secretary of health and human services.
“The demand is great and the supply from the federal government is flat — 108,000 doses a week. We want to ensure that we have the supply to meet scheduled appointments,” Sudders added. She noted that as of Friday, hospitals had administered 460,000 doses, nearly half the state’s total supply. …
(Alas, MA guvnah Baker – who previously was a health plan CEO –
seems to be flailing so far at handling covid. At least from the
perspective of those who are aging, in small towns, at
some distance from the few large inoculation centers.
However, this would be practically inevitable.)
Hospitals denounce state’s decision to shut-off vaccine supply
By focusing on mass vaccination sites, Massachusetts
risks leaving out the vulnerable and reluctant, critics say
Boston Globe – February 12
Hospital leaders and physicians expressed dismay on Friday at the Baker administration’s decision to halt vaccine distribution to hospitals and primary care offices, saying it could undercut efforts to reach minority communities and reluctant patients.
But the state’s top health official said that hospitals were scheduling more vaccine appointments than the state could meet with the current level of supplies.
“We all need to understand that we have a limited supply,” said Marylou Sudders, secretary of health and human services.
“The demand is great and the supply from the federal government is flat — 108,000 doses a week. We want to ensure that we have the supply to meet scheduled appointments,” Sudders added. She noted that as of Friday, hospitals had administered 460,000 doses, nearly half the state’s total supply.
She said state officials would meet with every hospital next week to ensure that “their planning and our planning are in sync.”
On Thursday, the state instructed hospitals to stop scheduling new vaccine appointments, saying they could hold appointments already made for next week and for second doses, but no more. …
Is This the End of Obsessively Hating Donald Trump?
NY Times – February 12
(Keith Olbermann) hated Donald Trump when hating Donald Trump wasn’t cool.
My credentials date back to Dec. 15, 1983, when CNN sent me to cover a public forum featuring the moguls of four New York sports teams. One of them, the newly minted proprietor of the long-forgotten New Jersey Generals, got up and spoke interminable nonsense for what felt like 20 minutes.
He promised the signing of superstar players he would never sign. He announced the hiring of immortal coaches he would never hire. He scheduled a news conference the next day to confirm all of it, and the next day never came.
As I finished recording one-on-one interviews with the three other owners, George Steinbrenner, Sonny Werblin and Fred Wilpon, he emerged from the darkness and began answering questions into my microphone before I asked any. He repeated his boasts of future glory, but this time he mentioned an entirely different set of coaches and players than he had from the podium. As we helped the crew pack up to head back to our newsroom, I said to my equally flummoxed producer, “What the hell was wrong with that Trump guy?”
I have some seniority on this topic.
I was there nearly at the beginning of the Great Hate, I have twice quit lucrative sinecures in sports to create pro bono video series warning against Mr. Trump, and now I am here with everybody else watching “Impeachment in Absentia” and wondering if we will ever get the opportunity to exorcise the enmity.
As obscenely insufficient as it sounds, the only real consequence of this second trial might be the unofficial termination of Mr. Trump’s political life. Senator Lisa Murkowski’s tepid Wednesday guess — “I don’t see how Donald Trump could be re-elected to the presidency again” — might be the closest thing to a tangible result.
Far more than the outcome of the trial was predetermined: Anybody on either side could have mapped the play-by-play with precision. Whomever you support, it has gone exactly as you expected it would.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who seemingly rotate as frequently and stumblingly as those imaginary football stars and coaches he told me he would steal 38 years ago, have fabricated the useful phantasm of “unconstitutionality.” It has provided Republican senators with an excuse to watch video of themselves and their colleagues nearly being captured and killed by a mob, and yet still say that was truly horrible but it’s just a shame we don’t have jurisdiction against an ex-president and oh by the way didn’t those impeachment managers do a great and solemn job and see I said something nice about Democrats therefore I’m for unity unlike that Biden guy.
If that’s all we get, what happens to the hate?
Since 2015, we Trump haters have at least structured this calculation in our mind: If he would just disappear, we might call it even. The baseline human want created by Trump Ubiquity has been the discontinuation of Trump Ubiquity. Even Mr. Trump’s own campaign post-mortem indicated that beyond the pandemic bungling, his loss owed in part to the sheer exhaustion of his voters.
But the more important need is one that moves along a very wide spectrum from revenge to prosecution to justice, to be enacted in public and on television, with both his henchmen and our battered psyches as witnesses. This itself has to some degree been precluded by the absence of the star witness. Not only did Mr. Trump remain in exile at Elba-Lago, but he was smart to do so. His attorneys needed to stick to their one-word script, and as may have come to your attention, Mr. Trump does not.
Yet we too are sticking to a script, as celebrants in the impeachment managers’ bid to win the hearts and minds of jurors who have not shown ownership of either. Mr. Trump may have railed against it and had his surrogates fight it, but the trial has given a new spotlight to an attention addict whose rehab was not going well. He is not there, but this is still “The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump,” about Donald J. Trump, featuring applause for Donald J. Trump, and starring Donald J. Trump as Donald J. Trump. His ego and his coffers need you to watch, to tweet, to rage.
So do you not watch, to enlarge the collective spiting of him? Do you give oxygen to an amoral human torch? The Resistance did not create or empower Mr. Trump. But we did make the classic first mistake of concluding that our insights, analysis and morality would convince his supporters that they were tragically wrong. When that failed, we made the classic second mistake of assuming we hadn’t made our first mistake loudly or clearly enough. I’m not ready to believe that we started it, but I, for one, have gotten loud and blasphemous enough to peel the paint off my walls.
Still, we cannot underestimate the power of righteous and organic hatred to overwhelm everything else. It is hard to fathom now, but in the epic sitcom “All in the Family,” one of the best running jokes consisted entirely of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker getting in the face of Bea Arthur’s Maude Findlay and announcing the identity of the worst president in history. He would elongate it and he would mispronounce it and when he would intone “Fraaaaanklin. Delllllano. Roooooooosevelt!”; she would erupt in paroxysms of liberal rage at his heresy.
These political passion plays were performed some 25 years after Roosevelt died, and were thus a real-time testament to something the half century since has erased: Beloved and revered as he may have been, F.D.R. was also passionately hated and blamed, and his memory alone could start political fistfights into at least the 1970s.
One wonders if the visceral hatred of Mr. Trump will end that soon. Or if it ever will. …
Why does the ongoing Senate Trial remind me so of the OJ Simpson Trial?
At the time, I lived by Lake Merrit in Oakland, CA. Walked around the Lake almost every day for ten years; got to know and talk to lots of my black neighbors. I’ll never forget the days of the trial; its effect on my black friends.
I’m not about to pretend that I like, am a friend of, the Lilliputian Senate Republicans, but I think I know why that the Senate Trial of Trump reminds me of the OJ Trial.
(NYT/KO: … … … )
What kind of ratings — TV and cultural — will the post-impeachment period produce? The most compelling television political coverage ever was either of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, or of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings of 1973. The latter probably wins for its longevity and plot twists. But both provide a template if any of our leaders actually want to indelibly burn into the retinas of history the full story of the insurrection.
No matter how much you or I might think the anti-Trump side is right, these earlier investigations were not choreographed and nearly scripted exchanges between accusers and excusers. And they did not begin and end with video packages of the incitements and the crimes, no matter how searingly effective and unforgettably produced they might have been.
The McCarthy and Watergate hearings were unfocused, exploratory and certainly organic investigations. The revelations, the shock, the urgency of action and the opposing camps were slowly built, not built-in.
Would the hate be better addressed and the nation be better served by a long and meticulous public investigation into the attack on the Capitol or even the entire Trump presidency, shaped something like the Watergate hearings, the Army-McCarthy hearings and the 9/11 commission? Or are the wounds too new to be thoroughly reopened? If we’d had television and Ken Burns then, would his “The Civil War” documentary have been a must-watch in 1866? Of course, there is already historical revisionism about Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 conspirators. Any sense that we might be too quick to relive the nightmare must confront the reality that the proverbial first draft of history often becomes the final version with only minor edits.
Ultimately, if this latest spasm in the greatest-ever threat to democracy doesn’t ease the hate, it will not be because we who loathe Mr. Trump are exhausted or traumatized or healing. It may be because even if 17 Republican senators were now to shock the world, there’s really nothing they can do to Donald Trump that we would feel would suffice.
The only thing we actually want to watch is the criminal trials. In which case, the worldwide popcorn shortage might be an extinction-level event.
Is this anything?
Inside the race to develop a vaccine for our other pandemic: Hate
A little-noticed group of government-funded researchers is
developing a clever inoculation against the disinformation
and violence threatening American democracy…
the race to develop a vaccine for our other pandemic
via @BostonGlobe – February 5
(Read on, at the link.)
How to Turn Your Red State Blue
NY Times – Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo – February 11
We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.
But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.
That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.
Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity. …
I carefully posted a set of important New York Times articles explaining the tragic way that state nursing homes have been subject to the coronavirus. There were thousands of needless deaths and many more infections that were policy driven. The references were clear and self-explanatory and important for New York and other states in terms of policy. The post I set down was precisely referenced, completely clear and important if understanding thousands of needless deaths is important. However, the post was deleted. I do not begin to understand the deletion and evident meanness.
I carefully posted a set of important New York Times articles explaining the tragic way that state nursing homes have been subject to the coronavirus. There were thousands of needless deaths and many more infections that were policy driven. The references were clear and self-explanatory and important for New York and other states in terms of policy.The post I set down was precisely referenced, completely clear and important if understanding thousands of needless deaths is important. However, the post was deleted.I do not begin to understand the meanness of the deletion.
Anne AB is experiencing problems with new “program”. There is no spite. I put “program” in quotes because I don’t know what to call new-days interface between computer and man. I suspect some day a “programming” glitch will end the world as we know it.
The irony is that while the deleted post was perfectly spaced, my complaint even though I was as careful lost the spacing and was double posted for whatever mysterious reason.
Comment link: https://angrybearblog.com/2021/02/open-thread-feb-12-2021#comment-3169986
Author: Justin Cidertrades
Comment:
remind me so of the OJ Simpson Trial?
“
~~Ken Melvin~
thanks for the reminder Ken! I can remember when all that hit the headlines. I think it was just about the time when one of my cousins was born, about the turn of the century. I had taken a cab in Manhattan. Arabic guy picked me up and just to make conversation, “do you think he done it”?
Arabic guy says “we’ll have to wait until the verdict is pronounced by the jury. if the jury says he was innocent then you’ll know he did it, but if the jury says he’s guilty you know that he didn’t have enough power to shake off the frame jobby. But if Jury say he’s innocent that means he was not framed, he did it. when F Lee Bailey read about it in the paper or heard it on the radio he called his limousine driver, told him to go buy a glove medium size that would be too small to fit on the hand of OJ then throw that glove into the blood when the police were looking the other way at the scene of the crime it’s that simple.
cab drivers pick up all the latest in Gossip,
better than any
newspaper
!
Manage your subscriptions | One click unsubscribe
Bout then, I used to get soup at a restaurant on College Ave in Oakland for the conversation with the Egyptian owner who told me more than once that Egyptian Cab Drivers knew much more about Russia than the CIA; knew more about everything than the CIA. I believed him, mostly. Ipso, Justin are you sure about the Manhattan Cabbie’s ethnicity?
Sorry for the glitch in service. AB is being migrated to a new server. I have alerted our IT about the problem.
https://angrybearblog.com/2021/02/status-of-angry-bear
Hospitals denounce state’s decision to shut-off vaccine supply
via @BostonGlobe – February 13
Hospital leaders and physicians expressed dismay on Friday at the Baker administration’s decision to halt vaccine distribution to hospitals and primary care offices, saying it could undercut efforts to reach minority communities and reluctant patients.
But the state’s top health official said that hospitals were scheduling more vaccine appointments than the state could meet with the current level of supplies.
“We all need to understand that we have a limited supply,” said Marylou Sudders, secretary of health and human services.
“The demand is great and the supply from the federal government is flat — 108,000 doses a week. We want to ensure that we have the supply to meet scheduled appointments,” Sudders added. She noted that as of Friday, hospitals had administered 460,000 doses, nearly half the state’s total supply. …
(Alas, MA guvnah Baker – who previously was a health plan CEO –
seems to be flailing so far at handling covid. At least from the
perspective of those who are aging, in small towns, at
some distance from the few large inoculation centers.
However, this would be practically inevitable.)
Hospitals denounce state’s decision to shut-off vaccine supply
By focusing on mass vaccination sites, Massachusetts
risks leaving out the vulnerable and reluctant, critics say
Boston Globe – February 12
Hospital leaders and physicians expressed dismay on Friday at the Baker administration’s decision to halt vaccine distribution to hospitals and primary care offices, saying it could undercut efforts to reach minority communities and reluctant patients.
But the state’s top health official said that hospitals were scheduling more vaccine appointments than the state could meet with the current level of supplies.
“We all need to understand that we have a limited supply,” said Marylou Sudders, secretary of health and human services.
“The demand is great and the supply from the federal government is flat — 108,000 doses a week. We want to ensure that we have the supply to meet scheduled appointments,” Sudders added. She noted that as of Friday, hospitals had administered 460,000 doses, nearly half the state’s total supply.
She said state officials would meet with every hospital next week to ensure that “their planning and our planning are in sync.”
On Thursday, the state instructed hospitals to stop scheduling new vaccine appointments, saying they could hold appointments already made for next week and for second doses, but no more. …
Hospitals denounce state’s decision to shut-off vaccine supply
By focusing on mass vaccination sites, Massachusetts
risks leaving out the vulnerable and reluctant, critics say
Boston Globe – February 12
You are on Open Thread three times. It is slow in posting I assume.
Coberly, Thank you so much. I supposed the post was considered irrelevant and was hurt by that.