I see a lot of back and forth on the concept of establishing a clear and trackable goal like a percent of the population vaccinated as a trigger to remove restrictions. I see the main resistance is that people are concerned that the target will be reached but it won’t be enough and cases won’t be down enough. I don’t see that as an issue at all. We cannot fear failure at this point and we cannot let that fear hold us back. JFK said we would put a man on the moon and we would do it in 10 years. He wasn’t afraid to say it because there were a million variables that could go wrong that would result in failure. He didn’t fear failure and we achieved the goal within the 10 years.
We need a similar target set for vaccinations. A clear goal and a clear reward for when we reach that goal. We get 70% of the eligible population vaccinated and we can return to normal. Since the states actually set covid restrictions it would be largely a symbolic gesture, but the CDC and the Federal government hold great influence over corporate policy on public health and also on state and local responses. I think it’s our best bet to get more people vaccinated and to ultimately win this battle. If a few months from now it turns out that we have 70% of the eligible people vaccinated and cases are still at 50,000 a day then the government would have to bite the bullet and say they messed up and that the number wasn’t enough. I’d rather see that then have the vaccination process slow because a politician doesn’t want an L in their column. The stakes are too high to play politics. Set the target and then push us over it. From Kennedy’s speech on going to the moon: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too”.
Notice this wasn't an announcement from NASA. Nobody asked them if going to the moon within 10 years was a good goal. Nobody asked the engineers if that was the target. Nobody asked Grumman if within 10 years was the moon lander goal.
It was a policy goal.
All those other groups, NASA, the engineers, Grumman, all the others that actually did the work to build, plan, execute the moon mission. They all provided advice and guidance. What kinds of resources would be required, what could speed up development, what would slow it down, what their best guests on the possible were. None of that set the goal though. The politicians set the goal and then used that advice to determine what actions were needed to support that goal. They weighed those actions against other uses of those resources for different goals.
Disney doesn't ask the cleaning staff to set a goal for how clean the park should be and how often there should be a garbage can. Leadership set's a goal and the cleaning staff tells them how often there should be a garbage can to meet that goal, what spacing them farther or closer together will do to achieving that goal. Leadership weighs that information against other concerns, such has how the park would look if there was a garbage can every 3 feet, which would certainly make it easier for people to use.
With COVID, the CDC, DHS, FDA, WHO, none of them set policy goals. They all provide advice and guidance to achieve the policy goals set by the elected politicians. I want all those groups to tell us what impacts will shorten, prolong, decrease spread, increase spread, etc, but none of them own defining what is the acceptable level we're willing to just live with.
Everyone who want's a definitive answer, write your congress people, ask the representatives, senators, Biden, state governors to set a goal. Have them use the advice from the other groups to get us to that goal, but ask an elected official what the policy goal should be. It's there job after all. Every time one of them ask the advisor what normal should be, they're ditching their job and trying to get someone else to do it. I would love for an elected politician to come out and say "Here's the goal, we expect a return to normal when XYZ is true. Let's all get vaccinated so we can achieve that goal faster."
Many posters here have shared what their policy goal would be, and most of them are relatively close to each other.
PS: Replying to
@GoofGoof since it builds on Kennedy setting a goal, but this is really for all those back and forth comments on "when is it enough", "it will always be here", "we cannot do this forever" posts. We're looking to the wrong people to set the policy.
www.niaid.nih.gov
