Economist Writing Every Day

Forget “The Christmas Prince” or “The Prince Christmas” or whatever is on Netflix. Why not spend your holiday refreshing this new vaccine dashboard?

Here’s the announcement:

Launching a new dashboard to track local news reports and state press releases on how many vaccine doses will be allocated to each state, since there seems to be no public federal effort. Browse each state's allocations and a map of doses per capita.https://t.co/CUP2W2ph7X

— Benjy Renton (@bhrenton) December 5, 2020

I personally know a few health care workers who got their shots (do not say “jab” to me) this past week. It’s all very exciting! Here at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), the medical community has freezers, fortunately.

Here’s VP Mike Pence getting his vaccine:

"Hope is on the way"

US Vice-President Mike Pence hails "safe and effective" coronavirus vaccine, after receiving it live on TVhttps://t.co/YlqglzEfZX pic.twitter.com/f1TeBnK049

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 18, 2020

Jeremy and Doug have both talked about allocation this week. Economists get really jazzed about allocating scarce resources. It’s been frustrating to watch first tests and now vaccines not be available on a market. Excellent points are also made every week over at Marginal Revolution on how we are missing an opportunity to get the incentives right. Supply. Curves. Slope. Up. (Thousands. Dying. Every. Week.)