The government’s decades-long failure to adequately fund public health is the reason the COVID-19 vaccine rollout had stumbled so badly, a top medical expert said Sunday.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” Dr. Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the inoculation rollout was hampered from the start.
“[W]hat should have happened, states needed money and clear and national direction months and months ago when it was clear we were on the road to have potential vaccines,” he said.
“Our public health system has been underfunded for decades and the idea that the public health system can stand up that quickly to do something on this scale is something that just can't happen,” he asserted.
"So dollars are starting to flow, hopefully Congress will come forward and provide more money to states, not just for public health, but to get schools in shape so more children can have learning in place, to get this done, to improve our systems.”
According to Besser, the most important question for coronavirus vaccines is whether they prevent serious illness and death — not how many are being distributed every day.
“The discussion of ‘can the nation do 1.2 million or 1.5 million doses a day’” is less important than “can we get vaccines to those people who are at the greatest risk of being infected, being hospitalized and dying,” he said. “We're not getting a lot of that data.”
“The data we're seeing shows there's a major gap by race, geography and by neighborhood,” he warned.
Related Stories:
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.