The vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, prevented 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization costs, according to a recently published analysis. They were – and are – hugely important to Americans' health and prosperity.
Operation Warp Speed
Jerry Rogers, the editor of both RealClearHealth.com and RealClearPolicy.com, moderated a discussion with several experts [1], including me, on various aspects of vaccines.
Every day of the week, surgeons stand before their peers to discuss and explain the most recent bad outcomes. It is part of our training and our work. As we continue to discuss and explain the public health, behavioral, and political choices during the pandemic, those weekly surgical conversations about morbidity and mortality can give us some insight into how we respond to what went right and what went wrong.
Operation Warp Speed, everyone loves watching a controlled building demolition, know your adversary, and social media and the “slap heard round the world.”
I admit I wandered down the rabbit hole on deplatforming free speech with three articles, all with different viewpoints. And then a piece on vaccinations, it is not about central control as much as centralized communication.
Eric Topol is a cardiologist working in translational medicine, innovation, at Scripps Clinic in San Diego. He is an active commentator in healthcare. Here is his Twitter thread on Operation Warp Speed along with the vaccine development timeline.
Operation Warp Speed brought together a broad array of government resources to achieve a similar, seemingly impossible rapid pace of development, regulatory approval, and distribution of vaccines to prevent COVID-19. But no matter how quickly or successfully vaccine(s) are developed we have been woefully ineffective in the development of other ways to tame the pandemic, especially readily available and accurate tests and proper PPE. Will the Biden plan pick up the slack?
Operation Warp Speed is the name of the federal effort to quickly bring a COVID-19 vaccine to the public. Like all federal efforts, it carries both a price tag and an organizational chart.