https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coronavirus-news-roundup-january-23-january-29/

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A question-and-answer piece with Dr. Leana Wen of the George Washington University School of Public Health explains why COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. is going so slowly and “the need to balance speed with fairness" (1/26/21), as freelance science writer Marla Broadfoot writes for Scientific American. The priority tiers developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control look good on paper but are rigid, Wen states in the piece. “At this point, the necessary step is to relax the measures and open vaccination up to broader categories of eligibility because there has been a lack of infrastructure to implement this the right way,” she states. A first-come, first-served policy will reach more people and avoid wasted doses, but disadvantage people with limited cell phone minutes, or weak or absent Internet service, as well as people who are less tech savvy. But this is a “race against time,” Wen says, and delaying progress toward herd immunity gives the virus more time to mutate to strains that are potentially more contagious or cause more severe disease or elude the available vaccines.