Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay on Tuesday blasted Gov. Ron DeSantis for giving Publix so much priority over the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in the county.
McKinlay criticized the governor’s decision, saying it severely limits the county’s ability to vaccinate significant portions of the population who don’t live close to a Publix, all while the COVID-19 vaccine supply remains so limited.
This eternal whining of the Democrats on anything related to the vaccine and how bad DeSantis is doing it. Publix is not Whole Foods with selected stores in selected neighbors but a chain of supermarkets with 813 locations in Florida and at least 78 stores in Palm Beach alone of which 67 of them will be offering the vaccinations.
I extracted this from the Publix’s store locator. As you can imagine, the green dots are Publix locations and I added the filter to display only the ones with pharmacies. the ones enclosed in the red box are the ones contained (more or less) within Palm Beach County.
And yes, there are a bunch of stores on the east side of the county because (drumroll) that is where the immense majority of the people live.
I chose the city of Boynton Beach because it is about the middle of the strip and used it in the store locator to find the closest stores:
That is 15 stores within a 6 mile radius. can you imagine ANY government operation setting up that many close locations much less run a smooth operation of any sorts? Hell, in a vaccination location in South Carolina, they asked the manager of a Chic-Fil-A to come help with the back up… and he did!
The problem is having Publix distribute the vaccine efficiently diminishes the glorification politicians are used to get. It means no opportunities for them to prance in front of a camera showing how merciful they are to the Little People. It robs them spotlight. And now that the weather is starting to warm back up down here, where do you rather wait for the vaccine? Hours and hours in some infernally hot parking lot, barely covered from the sun by a cheap tarp or inside an air-conditioned Publix while munching on one of their sub sandwiches?
Petty politician is petty.
And no doubt, the populated areas where the Publix are lean more blue than the more rural areas without them. So Gov. DeSantis is likely saving more Democrat lives than “redneck” Republican lives.
But true to form with Leftist double standards, they suddenly care about “redneck” Republican lives, but only as long as they can be used to attack a sitting Republican governor.
By way of comparison, there is NH, where the current phase (65+ and the like) is handled exclusively by sites run by the state. The two biggest cities in the state each have ONE site. And those are the only ones within 20 miles of where I live.
So what is Mighty Melissa’s plan for the ‘flyover’ parts of PBC that don’t have a Publix close by? Does her plan have a climate change approved fossil fuel limiting design? I’ld hate to kill the planet while trying to save Melissa’s incumbency.
Hey Miguel
Well they can’t bleat “Orange Man Bad” so they have to bleat “Desantis bad”
DeSantis is the new Donald, that’s for sure
The large government run vaccination sites remind me of the bad old days of the Soviet Union and their Hero Projects.
“The Soviet Socialist Republic of Kalifornia reports that a new reord number of vaccinations were performed at the LA People’s Dodger Stadium on Thursday.”