Interesting to me that TFA completely ignores the two biggest things the government could do to expedite the vaccination process in the US: Approve the Oxford/A

Interesting to me that TFA completely ignores the two biggest things the government could do to expedite the vaccination process in the US: Approve the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and extend the time in between doses of the mRNA vaccines. Studies in the UK and Brazil showed it to be safe and effective and it's been approved for use in the UK and, as of today, India. Apparently the FDA doesn't like studies from other countries, so they're waiting on a 3rd trial's data to come in, which may not happen for several months. The manufacturing technique and storage requirements for this vaccine mean that supply constraints should be much less significant than the currently approved vaccines. Doing this could easily save thousands, likely tens of thousands of lives by spring. So far the vaccines all ran with trials with the minimum time between doses that was likely to incur maximum immunity. It was absolutely the right call, given that they didn't know for sure how wildly effective the two mRNA vaccines would be in practice and wanted to expedite the trial timeline. However, now that we know the both vaccines provide roughly 80% immunity after 12 days, which likely last several months at least it would be smart to delay people second dose another 4-8 weeks to allow the maximum number of people to get some immunity quickly. The UK did both the above this week and I think we'll look back and realize it was absolutely the right move.