So many questions. So few answers.
I'm talking about how we are going to get the myriad vaccines, how the supply chain will work, where we will take it, where will we be able to not get Covid while we take it.
Lots of open issues.
Let's start with the distribution of the vaccines. The military has a team, led by Army Four Star General Gus Perna, who actually runs Operation Warp Speed. He has said, on 60 Minutes, that it is up to him to get the vaccine to where it has to go.
I think that's terrific. It's great to have a central distribution point, run by someone who understands supply chain.
The problem as I see it? The administration has said over and over again that they want the vaccines to be distributed by the states.
So, what does General Perna have to do with it?
Does he have to call 50 governors and ask them what to do? What makes us think that governors know anything about the process? But President Trump has repeatedly delegated everything to the states about this because, well, we don't really know why, because they don't know how to handle things, mostly by their own admission on background, of course.
Then there is the layer of distribution that is led by McKesson (MCK) , the wholesaler, and CVS (CVS) and Walgreen's (WBA) , the drug stores, that are supposed to give you the shots. McKesson apparently gets the vaccines from the Army but it's not really clear. We also don't know what the "partnership" between the federal government and the states and even the cities traced out by Operation Warp Speed's "From the Factory to the Front Lines" means. If all works well I can see the Department of Defense getting 300 million doses of a host of vaccines, all of which are different. They will then give them by January to McKesson which will then give them to the drug stores.
But what the heck do the drug stores do with them? Pfizer (PFE) needs minus 90 degrees to keep it preserved. That temperature will be measured by Zebra Tech (ZBRA) .
However the question is what drug chain can handle the Pfizer's safety issues. Moderna (MRNA) needs simple cooling but there are far fewer doses available, unlike Pfizer, and not nearly enough for much of the U.S. at all. Now we know of another vaccine, AstraZeneca (AZN) , which is talking about 3 billion doses next year. Initially though it is a much lower number. I don't even know if that goes to the U.S. I bet it doesn't.
So then what happens at the Walgreens, CVS level when it comes to inoculation? Is it done, for example, at the CVS health hubs? Is it given to us at the same place that they test, the parking lot? Is there a centralized best way to get it?
None of these questions have been answered which is why I said that I see chaos ahead as we can't even imagine this process working.
How much better would it have been if this were done like the vaccines to eliminate polio where vaccines were mandatory. We had to go to our local schools and get it - or else.
But that was the 1950s, a simpler time, when the president was Eisenhower, and his bearing was such that nothing was political or divisive about it.
Now I have come to believe that 70 million people like the states' rights methods that the president has presented. They do not mind the chaos because nothing the president does is more chaotic than what the Democrats would do.
Hence the question: will you even take it? If it isn't really endorsed by the states and it is really run by the drug stores it seems pretty unlikely that most people will take it.
Oh well.
(CVS Health is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS member club. Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells CVS? Learn more now.)
