Killer Kate's "very dark, low day"
There really is no other way to describe Oregon's Covid vaccine distribution than as an epic failure. Here's the latest, from the Oregonian:
Tens of thousands of people in the Portland region already eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine may wait weeks -- if not months -- to be inoculated against the coronavirus, public health officials said Tuesday, with one describing the failure as “a very dark, low day” for the region....
Although Oregon began offering vaccines to many doctors, nurses and other frontline workers in December, health care workers who aren’t affiliated with one of the five major healthcare giants in the Portland region have had difficulties scheduling vaccinations....
Now, those workers already in line for a vaccine will likely get jumped by educators who qualified Monday under a push by Gov. Kate Brown to reopen classrooms to in-person learning....
The metro region expects 15,000 vaccines to be injected into people’s arms this week – and 12,000 of those are earmarked for educators, leaving just 3,000 doses for those in Phase 1A who were supposed to be inoculated before teachers, officials said. The number of skipped-over health care workers – including professionals in private practice or those who aide people with intellectual and development disabilities, among others – set to receive vaccines in the short-term “is very limited.”
“This is an incredibly frustrating situation,” Jessica Guernsey, Multnomah County’s public health director, said at the outset of an hour-long news conference Tuesday. “I’m sorry for any distress that this has caused.”
Public health officials said the primary challenge is too many Oregonians are now seeking inoculations amid a limited supply of vaccine. It’s the same warning Oregon’s hospital trade group issued last week, saying Brown’s plan to make teachers and seniors eligible would set unreasonable expectations and lead to confusion.
The guy who is running the state "health authority," Patrick Allen, is one of those all-purpose Salem bureaucrats who the governors always think can run anything. If you ran the DMV, you can run the Department of Revenue. If you ran the building permit bureau, you can run the health department.
Never has that been proved more wrong than in this case.
Mr. Allen is not up to the task and needs to move on. He was brought in on an emergency basis a few years ago to patch up a poltical scandal. He had nine months to get ready for Covid vaccination, and he failed.
The governor doesn't seem up to to the task, either. And while it's not likely that she'll be moving on, she needs to get a competent medical professional in charge of Covid vaccination, as in yesterday, and get out of the way.
Oregon https://www.oregonlive.com/travel/2021/01/oregons-largest-tree-now-a-magnificent-stump-on-the-oregon-coast.html
ReplyDeleteAllen is the same person who heads the Sherwood School District. He pulled a last-minute coup with the mayor to shut down the last UGB expansion in Sherwood. In my opinion, it was a manipulative reaction to disassociate from the prior mayor, who left under a cloud, but who spent a lot of time and effort (and Metro grant money) analyzing and recommending expansion under a very transparent process that involved city residents and staffers, and property owners outside the UGB. Anything the first mayor started wasn't going to get finished. The school board, which got a huge bond to produce a brand new high school (that also budgeted for future expansion of the school) and which oversees two newer schools off Edy Road said "no" to the expansion because it would overburden the schools.
ReplyDeleteThe City Council tried to railroad their vote through in a quick meeting. One council member put the brakes on that to allow for due process and to analyze the situation - fully realizing that a "no" vote would toss away thousands of hours and even more dollars worth of effort. At the second hearing during which a bunch of the school board members gave the same droning message, they did not allow some of the land owners outside the city to testify and then shot down the proposal.
After that meeting Allen and a bunch of his cronies met at a local pub and raised glasses and laughed giddily that they had shot down the measure. I know because I was there with clients who live outside the UGB. Very poor form to showboat like that.
As of today, there are only two single-family detached properties listed under $684,500 in Sherwood. The average list price for the homes is $1.112 million. They don't want new people. They don't want affordable housing. The mayor is committed to bringing in commerce and industry. If they do get it there, people won't be able to afford to live there because it's so expensive. They've become Lake Oswego without the lake. Good on Allen and the mayor.
The UGB long ago became a weapon of dysfunctional and ruinous planning. Even when expanded, METRO et al throw up layers of bureaucratic obstruction that freezes progress. Expansion tracts lay fallow for decades as insanely costly and burdensome master planning processes slug along. It's all a hopeless arena of chaos by inept and deceitful people with ludicrous notions and agendas.
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