Hi, I'm Danframat and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Walmart.

Today is Wednesday, January 6th.

Stocks are up, American democracy is down, and we're focused on the coronavirus vaccine rollout.

We're now three weeks into America's vaccination effort, and it's going maddeningly slowly.

The official plan from Operation Warp Speed was for 20 million Americans to receive their first dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine by the end of December.

But we're now a week into January, and the total number

is just around 5 million. In fact, not even 20 million doses have been distributed to the states,

let alone stuck into American arms. To be clear, this isn't really about supply or manufacturing.

Former FDA commissioner and current Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb told CBS

recently that 40 million doses have been delivered, which means most of them are just sitting

in storage facilities. Instead, it seems the problem is really one of responsibility or a lack

thereof. The federal government kind of kicked the can to the states. Many of the

states then kicked it to municipalities, and some of those municipalities gave vaccination

responsibilities to individual health care and nursing home operators. Inadequate accountability,

inadequate planning, inadequate resources, inadequate vaccinations.

All the while, record hospitalizations and deaths, with much of the country's economic

and educational engine stuck in neutral.

So we want to go deeper into what's gone wrong and how it can be fixed with Helen

Brandswell, a senior writer with Stat News.

But first, this.

We're joined now by Helen Brandswell, a senior writer at Statt News.

So, Helen, can I just start with, it seems that so many of the problems with the vaccination

...