To realize how fumbled the current vaccine rollout is, we can look back to 1947, when a single case of smallpox in New York City led to the vaccination of six million people in less than a month.
— Marc Siegel
As of today, Americans have received 231 million jabs. We're bungling our way through the pandemic.
When blowhards like Marc Siegel insist America can't manage its way out of a paper bag—that we can't do anything like we did in "the good old days"—my blood pressure surges.
Does he think we were always "exceptional" during past crises? That our execution was always flawless?
We weren't. It wasn't.
Consider only one crisis.
During World War II, over 52,000 Americans died in aerial combat; another 26,000 died in training accidents.
Training accidents. These dead never saw a German or Japanese target.
It's no surprise.
We hired companies like GM and Packard—which had never produced a single airplane—to rush-ship planes by the tens of thousands, planes that were rife with design flaws; and then asked men who'd never been in an airplane to fly them.
With the massive and hurried increase in aircraft production came a commensurate increase in crashes. America lost 23,000 planes in aerial combat; 42,000 in training accidents.
Anxious airmen in training gave the clunky B-24—the most-produced of American bombers—the dreary nickname the “flying coffin.”
So much for exceptional.
So much for flawless.
And will again.
