The Trump administration is once again doing something that is incomprehensibly incompetent and utterly unsurprising at the same time.

Let’s go through this step by step:

• Last week, following emergency FDA approval, a coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Pfizer started being administered nationwide.

• Distribution of that vaccine is run through the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” which is a joint project of several agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services.

• Over the past few days, numerous states reported that they were just finding out that they would be getting much less — perhaps only half as much — of the vaccine than the Trump administration initially committed to provide.

• When asked to explain, Trump’s abysmal Health and Human Services Secretary, Alex Azar — who just announced that his own wife has coronavirus — tried to blame Pfizer.

• Pfizer says it has millions of doses ready to distribute but has “not received any shipment instructions for additional doses” from the Trump administration.

• And officials from numerous states say that the Trump administration is giving no explanation whatsoever for any delays or reductions in distributing the vaccine.

• Meanwhile, COVID-19 has surpassed both heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of death in the U.S.

With the coronavirus killing more Americans every day than died in the 9/11 attacks, vaccination is our only hope of emerging from this public health and economic catastrophe.

Yet the Trump administration is leaving millions of vaccine doses just sitting in a warehouse.

Join Public Citizen in demanding that Donald Trump, Alex Azar, and the entire Trump administration stop scapegoating others and get their act together for distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.

Add your name.

Thanks for taking action.

Stay safe.

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

P.S. For half a century, Public Citizen has been advancing policies that put the needs of everyday Americans before the greed of billionaires and Big Business. That legacy of progress and that ongoing work could not matter more right now, as our nation transitions to a Joe Biden presidency that will be as progressive as we — you and Public Citizen, together — make it.

Of course, we’re also busy undoing damage the Trump administration has already done and watching out for whatever shenanigans a lame-duck Donald Trump tries to get away with. And — like so many nonprofits and small businesses — we continue to experience financial strain related to the coronavirus pandemic.

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