When President Biden assumed office, he declared that his administration would set the goal of 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days. But it's not exactly the most ambitious goal, considering we were already nearly there. In Biden's first week in office, nearly 983,000 shots a day on average were administered.
On Fox News's "The Story with Martha MacCallum" on Monday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) declared that the Biden White House, starting with CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who claimed she doesn't know how many vaccines they have, are "trying to trick" us with their vaccine numbers.
"The truth is, and I think she knows this, by the end of the Trump administration, the last few days, over 1 million doses a day were going out," Crenshaw said. "She claims that was an average of 500,000. Now she's trying to trick you with some statistics there. And then they claim that they're going to double that number and get up to 1 million. And then they're going to pat themselves on the back and claim victory."
Wow. Almost like they inherited a pretty decent vaccine plan.
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) January 23, 2021
Almost like they totally lied about “starting from scratch.”
And the media helped them. https://t.co/HwI4D8UwMH
"It's exactly the same plan that the Biden administration is now using," he added. "They're trying to gaslight you. They're not telling the truth here. There's always been a good plan in place."
Washington Post reporting also confirms that the rate of vaccinations was already well on its way to reaching the magic 1 million-a-day mark before Biden even stepped into the Oval Office.
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On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Trump administration had averaged about 500,000 vaccinations a day — half the 1 million daily needed to meet Biden’s target. But the seven-day average has risen steadily, from 482,865 two weeks ago to 1,022,342 Friday, according to Post data.
Before leaving the administration Wednesday, Paul Mango, former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, said he looked at the numbers and saw that nearly 3.5 million vaccinations had been completed over the previous 72 hours.
“We’re averaging 1.1 million a day now,” he said. “They would have to slow down not to meet their target.”
All this to say, President Biden's 100 million vaccines in 100 days goal is not all that enterprising. If the Biden administration really wants to impress us, Crenshaw said, they should announce that they're doubling the doses of vaccines to 200 million.
That's not just a conservative senator making that argument. The New York Times suggested the same goal.
Why the vaccine ramp up needs to be doubled - 200 million #first100days via @NYTimes https://t.co/GQpjCBvUmC
— Martha MacCallum (@marthamaccallum) January 24, 2021
At a Monday press conference, Biden said he's "optimistic" that they'll have enough vaccines in the next few weeks to get 100 million shots into arms, but he "hopes" they can get to 1.5 million a day.
Asked by AP reporter Jeff Zeleny last week if he planned to improve that goal, President Biden dismissed him with a, "c'mon, man."
Before the Biden administration tells you what a mess they inherited from their predecessors, remind yourselves of the incredible work done by the former HHS and Operation Warp Speed.
The Trump administration appeared to at least get a passing grade from Bloomberg on a few fronts:
The U.S. spent more than any country in the world to help speed up the development and deployment of vaccines. It secured more than 1 billion doses from six companies before any of the shots had been approved. For all the criticism that has been directed at the early fumbles of the vaccine rollout, the U.S. still leads the world in shots administered and is fifth in the world on per-capita basis.
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