On the other hand, the Cutter incident forced the government’s hand. It simply could not sit back and allow private industry to manage a national vaccine program. The National Institutes of Health became much more involved in vaccine testing — and its budget more than tripled. And while the federal government still wasn’t willing to take over the distribution itself, it did begin to fund the states’ efforts. The truth is, though, that shortages remained an issue until an oral vaccine, developed by Albert Sabin, became widely available in the late 1950s.
One difference between then and now is that Americans were far more trusting of large institutions, including government, than they are today. A similar incident now would have devastating consequences, not only to the people who got Covid-19 as a result of taking a contaminated vaccine but also in giving anti-vaccine proponents a powerful talking point. That we haven’t had such a disaster is a testament to the pharmaceutical companies and the government health bureaucracy, both of which have insisted on standard protocols in the face of Trump’s anger that they weren’t moving fast enough.
But just as the Eisenhower administration failed to plan for distributing the polio vaccine, so has the Trump administration largely failed to plan for the Covid-19 virus — despite having a year to do so. The results have been exactly what the polio experience should have taught us. Expectations of a huge early rollout have been dashed. Shortages have been prevalent. Pharmaceutical companies have said they have doses ready but haven’t been told by the federal government where to send them. States have to fend for themselves. Disputes have erupted about how to allocate the vaccine that is available — something that also happened in the 1950s.
“A plan that took the whole nation into account would have been a more effective way to approach it,” Josh Michaud of the Kaiser Family Foundation told Business Insider. Well, yes. We don’t have a Covid-19 equivalent of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and it’s probably just as well; a foundation with that kind of power would likely cause tremendous suspicion today. As was true in the 1950s, the only entity capable of putting together a distribution plan for the nation is the federal government. That is a lesson that remains relevant today.
The combination of incompetence and indifference of the Trump administration in dealing with the pandemic is sadly well known by now. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to do better, starting with getting the vaccine to more people more quickly. Let’s hope someone passes him a primer on the polio vaccine. It will help.
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."