COVID19 Update - Day 279

US Tests: 189,158,430*

US Cases: 16,339,404*

US Deaths: 292,404*

Worldwide Cases: 72,778,813*

Worldwide Deaths: 1,619,399*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

In case anyone is wondering, yes, Trump is going to prioritize politics over the lives of the American people right up to the bitter end (emphasis mine):

Congress has yet to appropriate any money for vaccine distribution. While the federal government has spent billions of dollars developing vaccines to prevent COVID-19, not a single federal dollar has been passed for the purpose of conducting the inoculation campaign itself.

Guilford County, which received $94 million in CARES Act funding that expires Dec. 31, expects to scrape together $1.2 million for public health in 2021.

“We’re trying to get it done, but it’s going to be hard,” Vann told TPM. “It’s disheartening to see that we don’t have that support to do our work without having to worry.”

In many cases, TPM found, local public health departments are in a similar place to Guilford County’s: they’ve spent months focused on fighting the pandemic, but have only just begun to plan for distributing the COVID-19 vaccine en masse. As they turn to that task, they face little help from the federal government; as the months have gone by, Congress has been unable to reach a deal on money for vaccine distribution.

Already burdened by limited budgets and what CDC Director Robert Redfield described as the “the most difficult” months in the history of U.S. public health, local departments could face delays in getting the life-saving shot out to their populations absent federal support as they lack cash to hire vaccinators, spread the word about how to get the vaccine and ensure that people show up for both shots of the two-dose inoculation.

Does anyone care to guess how motivated Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are to provide the funding necessary to make sure that everyone gets vaccinated in a timely manner?  Especially since those vaccinations are going to happen during the Biden administration?