A Florida official's insight into the vaccine distribution chaos

‘The truth is, nobody told us what to be ready for’ Roger Desjarlais, county manager in Lee County, Fla., on the unanticipated challenges of rolling out the vaccine. Washington Post

A Florida county manager's description of the challenges in distributing the vaccine

" We’re trying to get this vaccine into people’s arms as fast as we can, but everyone seems to have a better solution than the ones we’re using. I’m not very popular right now. I’ve been called incompetent more times in the last month than I have in my whole career.

"Could our vaccinations have been more efficient from the get-go? Absolutely. I could spend all day trying to pass around blame and dodge responsibility, but I’ve been in public service for 40 years, and part of being in a leadership position is knowing how to stand up and take some hits. We’re trying to get better. We’re figuring it out as we go.

"I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t expect for us to be managing this rollout at the county level. For whatever reason, I made the assumption back in the fall that when vaccines became available, it would be handled by some combination of federal and state government. Why I didn’t think beyond that, I can’t tell you. I’m feeling a little stupid right now.

"Each state was left to figure this out. The state handed the operations piece on to the county. That’s not what I anticipated. I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people saying: “You’ve known for nine months that this was coming, and you should have had a plan in place.” But the truth is, nobody told us what to be ready for. I had no idea this would be our responsibility. I’m sorry, but I just didn’t.

"There had been rumors for weeks about vials of vaccine starting to show up in Florida, but we didn’t know where, or which one, or if it would be one dose or two, or who would be eligible to get it. I got a phone call the Saturday after Christmas from our local health department asking for my help, and that was the first time I got involved. The state had given us 12,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine with instructions to administer it as fast as possible to health-care workers and anyone over age 65. There wasn’t a whole lot more information. We asked the higher-ups: “How much more vaccine are we getting? When should we expect to have more?”

"Nobody knew. We’ve been given a lot of responsibility when it comes to giving out this vaccine, but not much control. It was basically: 'You know as much as we do. Go get shots in arms.'  ....”