“Psst…do you know where to get a COVID vaccine?” For the past few months, this question has been asked repeatedly, and urgently, by tens of millions of Americans, many of whom are resorting to the services of volunteers to navigate convoluted websites in the middle of the night. Yet at the same time, millions of Americans who are eligible for vaccines have simply refused them, with countless doses routinely ending up in the trash. To many government officials, this is but collateral damage, only minorly detracting from an otherwise successful centrally-planned distribution system. But to an economist, these are the hallmarks of failed government policies.
Sadly, in much of the rest of the world, the question of vaccine availability is also asked with increasing urgency, but with even less prospect of a consistent or public answer. That the United States—the world’s largest economy—is doing better with vaccine distribution than countries with state-run health care systems sets quite the low bar.
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