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by legulere 1961 days ago
> America’s distribution plan is no more fair or logical than a Soviet-style queue for cabbage.

I don't see how a capitalist distribution system (if you have money you get it earlier) is in any way more fair than a system which is based on need.

Capitalism's strength is in extracting resources and increasing production and efficiency in things there is a good market for. But it's not good at all in distributing things.

3 comments

When it comes to serious diseases I don't think we are ever in the 'realm of fairness'.

In an ideal world, we would vaccinate every single person at the same time. But we can't do that so we have to prioritize based on varying strategies.

The EU and the US have both been entirely inept when dealing with SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. The rollout has to happen FAST on a planetary scale. Mutations happen as we speak and if we are in bad luck, one of those will knock-out the vaccines and get us back to square one.

We need to vaccinate countries that we usually just don't give a shit about because they may be a mutation source in the future.

I do not know about the US, but the problems of the EU are with acquiring enough vaccines (ordering too little and too late), not with distributing it. Distribution even is a per country thing. I cannot speak about the other EU countries but at least in Germany we have a fair vaccination queue based on risk and vaccination centers that are sitting idly just because there's not enough vaccine here yet.

Both my grandparents that still live are over 80 and I worried about them the most. They both were vaccinated in the beginning of January.

>But it's not good at all in distributing things.

Maybe if you micro-benchmark it, but capitalism tends to have the food to distribute in the first place.

> not good at all in distributing things

Amazon, FedEx, Wal Mart, others might disagree.

UPS. You can't forget big brown for logistics.