“New York’s mass-vaccination plans are shelved as Cuomo takes different path”

County officials who have for years been planning for a mass vaccination said they are seeing that training and preparation — much of it funded by millions of dollars in federal grants — pushed aside as the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has retained control of the state’s coronavirus vaccination program, including having hospitals rather than local health departments administer the doses.

Interviews with multiple county officials over the past week confirm that many are unclear why the governor’s administration has not activated the county-by-county system, a plan that included recent practice sessions in which members of the public received regular flu vaccines at drive-thru sites.

…In Albany County, officials have privately said they could vaccinate the population of the southern half of the county in a few days if they were given the coronavirus vaccines and allowed to mobilize their plan.

Here is the full, gory story.  It is clear they have just begun thinking about this.  I really do not understand why Paul Krugman has been praising the New York State response for so many months, they have gone from one disgrace to another.  Ross Barkan offers further commentary.  And here is de Blasio on Cuomo.

As a side note this is interesting: “The Times Union is not disclosing the [vaccination] location because county officials contend the vaccination sites should not be publicly disclosed for security purposes.”

To be clear, other states are messing up too, some of them worse than NY.