Joe Henderson: Hillsborough COVID-19 vaccine rollout a ‘clown show’

Vaccines save lives, no m,atter what Ron DeSantis says. Image via AP.

I normally prefer to provide my own snark in this space, but this time I’ll cede the opening statement to Republican Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan. During a Board meeting Wednesday, Hagan said the following about the COVID-19 vaccine, uh, well, we can’t call it a rollout exactly.

What should we call it?

Mr. Hagan?

“For me, the only adequate way to characterize the vaccine registration process is that of a clown show,” he said. “However, it’s not amusing when the potential life and death consequences (are) at stake. Candidly, if this occurred in the private sector, someone’s ass would be fired.”

Credit Tampa’s FOX 13 reporter Jennifer Holton for that tweet, along with this nugget. She reported that Hillsborough Deputy County Administrator Greg Horwedel fired the call center vendor in charge when the starting gun sounded earlier this week for anyone 65 years and over to make vaccinations appointments.

I tried to do just that once, then twice, then … aw, you know.

Nothing worked.

This crap is going on all over the state.

Clown show indeed.

The question is, why? Oh, and who else should be fired?

It’s not like we didn’t know vaccines were on the way. The feds announced Operation Warp Speed April 29. It wasn’t long until there were reports of rapid advancements in an unprecedented effort to find a vaccine that works against that wretched people-killing virus.

Somewhere, don’t you think that people in charge might have said, “Hey, let’s have a distribution plan in place that’s ready to roll.”

If one existed that can adequately address a problem on this scale, it has yet to be revealed. If there was such a plan, it isn’t working.

The state announced Tuesday that vaccinations will be available at select Publix stores. That’s great; I get my flu shot every year from Publix. But shouldn’t that plan have been in the works long before now?

Yes, there were variables. It’s complicated.

No one could say for sure how many doses of the vaccine Florida would receive (clearly, not even close to enough for now). Distribution would be tricky. Lessons learned from the testing debacle showed that there has to be an orderly process for those receiving the vaccine.

So, yeah, we have to make appointments.

There has to be some order.

Except, so far, that’s been a bridge too far for the majority of folks trying to roll up their sleeves for the shot.

I mean, thousands of people can’t even get through on the phone to start the orderly process, so this is what we get.

Even if people get through, counties received a sparse number of vaccines. In Hillsborough, for instance, the initial allocation was 9,000 doses to vaccinate more than 200,000 seniors 65 and over.

Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted to get the older, more vulnerable people vaccinated as quickly as possible, which seemed like a good idea. I was pleased, sure.

People didn’t know when DeSantis announced that seniors jumped to the head of the line because Florida wasn’t nearly ready to meet the demand. And that’s where we came in.

Clown show?

Yeah, but only if it’s one of those creepy clowns from a horror movie.