Distributing the COVID-19 Vaccine: A Virtual Conversation with Gerald Posner
Thursday, January 14, 7 pm EST on Zoom
- Why are there delays in vaccine distribution?
- Why have so few people been vaccinated?
- Is giving people just one dose of the vaccine a sound strategy?
Science Writers in New York is excited to kick off 2021 with author and award-winning investigative journalist Gerald Posner (@geraldposner).
Posner will talk to SWINY co-chair David Levine (@dlloydlevine) about why the vaccine rollout is so slow, what can be done about it and whether altering the vaccine dose schedule makes sense.
The U.S. government has shipped more than 15 million vaccine doses to states, but only 4.5 million people have received them so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are 21 million health care workers nationwide and three million residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
In New York City, whose population is 8 million, approximately 110,000 people received the first of two doses necessary to help prevent serious cases of the disease. That is about a quarter of the total number received by the city.
According to The New York Times, “Around the world, inoculation efforts in many countries are rolling out slower than promised, even as the count of new infections soars and record numbers flood hospitals, placing a double burden on health care providers who have also been tasked with leading the vaccination push. And a more contagious variant spreading widely in England and detected in dozens of other countries threatens to give the virus an even greater advantage.”
There have been proposals to just give one dose of the vaccine to get more people vaccinated. But Dr. Anthony Fauci said on January 5th, “there is no scientific data to support giving just a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines.”
About Gerald Posner
Posner is the author of 13 acclaimed books, including New York Times nonfiction bestsellers Case Closed, Why America Slept and God’s Bankers. Posner was a finalist for the Pulitzer in History. The New York Times said his latest book Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (March 2020, Simon and Schuster) was “a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients…[it] reads like a pharmaceutical version of cops and robbers.”
Garry Wills calls Posner “a superb investigative reporter” and the Los Angeles Times says he is “a classic-style investigative journalist.” “Painstakingly honest journalism,” concluded The New York Times. “Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, demolishes myths through a meticulous re-examination of the facts,” reported the Chicago Tribune. “Meticulous research,” Newsday. John Martin, former national correspondent for ABC News says, “Posner is one of the most successful investigators I have encountered in 30 years of journalism.”
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When:
Thursday, January 14
7 to 8 pm EST
Register:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pnKXyTioTkO8DyHQgOhDRA
