Cartoon: Vaccine confusion in Philly

“Getting a COVID-19 vaccine shouldn’t be like the Hunger Games.”

That’s according to Lina Hidalgo, a judge in Harris County, Tx., who made that remark after her county launched an online system for people to sign up to receive the vaccine after a month of confusion.

It’ll be months before everyone who wants a vaccine will have access to one, according to the Biden administration. But across the country, a scattershot approach largely left in the hands of local officials had predictably led to a confusing and unequal rollout of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

Here in Philadelphia, confusion is high due to a botched vaccine partnership between the city and Philly Fighting COVID, a non-profit turned profit run by a 22-year-old grad student with no medical experience. City Council demands answers, Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Pa.) wants assurances that vaccine distribution will be equitable, and Mayor Jim Kenney has remained largely silent.

The situation is so bad, even Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf made it clear to reporters he had no hand in what was going down in the commonwealth’s largest city, since Philadelphia is distributing the vaccine independently from Pennsylvania.

“This is one of those cases where I can actually point the finger and say, it’s not my job,” Wolf said Thursday.

That’s fine, but Pennsylvania isn’t doing much better. As of Friday morning, just 5.4% of the population has received one dose of the vaccine, behind New Jersey (6.3%) and Delaware (7.1%) and among the lowest rates in the country, according to an analysis of CDC data by NPR.

Of course, confusion is an excellent breeding ground for fraud, and unscrupulous profiteers have swooped in trying to take advantage of city residents. My colleague Grace Dickinson put together a list of vaccine scams to avoid, but basically if a vaccine offer sounds too good to be true (and requires your credit card number) avoid it.

As of Friday morning, about 4.2 million Americans have received two doses of the coronavirus vaccine. That’s somewhere around 2% of the country’s adult population. Experts say we need about 70% to 80% or so to reach herd immunity (according to Anthony Fauci, we may need close to 90% immunity).

So at this confusing pace, we might all be able to return to our lives sometime in mid-2020s. Forget GameStop, time to invest in more sweat pants.

Here’s a roundup of some of my recent coronavirus cartoons. For more editorial cartoons, visit the Inquirer’s cartoon section.