Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty runs down several recent stories about shipments of COVID-19 vaccine that have gone astray or been allowed to spoil:
When a pharmacist discovered that 57 vials....Nearly 2,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine....More than 1,100 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine....165 Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses....the majority of the 11,900 doses in the shipments.
When all of these anecdotes are laid out, it feels like a small miracle that anyone ever gets vaccinated.
This adds up to about 15,000 doses out of 49 million that have been distributed so far. That's 0.03 percent.
Geraghty asks, "Is this the most rage-inducing Corner post I have ever written?" I'd say it's not only not rage inducing, it's positively miraculous. If the number were ten times higher, it would still be pretty good.
This is yet another example of what I (clumsily) call the "America is a big country" syndrome. It's easy to find examples of almost anything, and it's just as easy to come up with large-sounding numbers. But that's only because our country has a population of 330 million. There's always somebody doing something stupid. And even a hundredth of a percent is still 33,000 people.
So: good job, vaccine distributors! Now if we can just figure out what happened to the 20 million doses the Trump administration apparently failed to account for.
I think there's room for a collected "wit and wisdom" of Kevin. Include this:
" There's always somebody doing something stupid."
That goes nicely with Gilda Radner's "It's always something."
Those unaccounted for vaccines, a hugely uncoordinated and undocumented distribution seems designed to cover up some kind of theft, doesn't it?
My money - such as it is - is on Kushner's shadow COVID-19 team of college buddies or whoever thet were.
Yup.
The vast majority of Geraghty's "fleecing of America"/John Stossel style lament for American efficiency poisoned by government happened while El Jefe was still in the West Wing.
Of course, just as Bill Climpton & Janet Reno were responsible for Ruby Ridge, & not George H.W. Bush & William Barr, the consensus media opinion will be Biden & Harris did this, & as a result we must punt supposed pandemic response czar Ron Klain like his name's Shirley Sherrod.
It's amazing to me how much conservative outrage basically amounts to numerical illiteracy.
that's a feature, not a bug, for Republicans
I'll always be grateful that you coined the term "nutpicking" way back when. Thank you.
As I often have said to a young guy I work with who is hopelessly conflicted by logic and his GO0 roots, there are Billions of people on earth and you can literally find someone doing anything. What the Faux boys and girls love to do is say look at that tree, f the forest.
OK, I give up. What does "GO0 roots" mean?
LOL
*******It's easy to find examples of almost anything, and it's just as easy to come up with large-sounding numbers. But that's only because our country has a population of 330 million.*******
It's also because the vast majority of those 330 million are functionally innumerate. Or, perhaps (better yet) numerically *indifferent*.
Everything is in fact bigger in Texas.
And if you are a journalist, anecdotes humanize your point and data is boring.