Slow And Steady Wins The Race, Or At Least Might Prevent You From Having To Run The Race Again

Last Updated on: 29th December 2020, 01:58 pm

Admittedly I don’t know shit about shit when it comes to the safe and proper administration of vaccines, so maybe there’s a solid reason for all of this carrying on about how reserving doses so that people are able to get their second COVID shot is all of a sudden bad. But what I do understand are logic and common sense, and they tell me a few things:

  1. If it takes two shots a few weeks apart for the vaccine to work as intended, you should go out of your way to ensure that anyone who gets the first one gets their second one when they’re supposed to get it. Anything other than that would be a waste of valuable resources. Yes, vaccinating lots of people quickly is also good, but we don’t exactly have reams of data about how well only getting the one shot actually works and for how long.
  2. Relying on what you do have generally works better than relying on what somebody tells you you’re supposed to have, especially when dealing with a stressed and unproven supply chain during an emergency.
  3. Things going well is often preferable to things going fast.

This comes after Ontario announced on Monday that it’s changing its vaccination plans following a growing consensus against reserving doses and instead vaccinating as many people as possible. 
According to the province, clinical guidance recommended using half the available vaccine supplies while reserving a second dose in the event of supply chain disruptions during the initial rollouts in Toronto and Ottawa. 
But in a statement issued Monday, Alexandra Hilkene, spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott, said the province is scrapping that plan, instead counting on confirmed shipments of the vaccine set to arrive in the coming weeks. 
“We’re going to keep our eye to make sure that the second dose for those individuals is on our … horizon,” Hillier said.
“We know that it’s coming and if it’s not, we’ll just slow down a little bit so we do have that second dose.”

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