Demand CDC send more monkeypox vaccine to Washington state

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, August 10, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent Washington state a mere 3,000 courses of the monkeypox vaccine. This state has a population of 8 million people, of whom we can vaccinate a tiny fraction with the current allocation of vaccine. This doesn’t have to be, however. If we can persuade our federal partners at CDC to send enough of the vaccine to protect every vulnerable person in Washington, we have the capacity for a vaccination effort of that scale. I have personally spoken with public health officers in Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston and Spokane counties. All have assured me that there are plans and infrastructure in place capable of mass vaccination events that could protect the entire LGBTQ population in their districts. We just need the vaccine itself to get to Washington state, so we can get rolling.

I need your help. I have been writing, emailing, calling and visiting the offices of our two U.S. senators, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, members of the Pierce and Thurston County councils, and health officers across the state for a month trying to get them to call CDC and ask for more vaccine, to protect their constituents. This has been met with some success.

However, we need to push harder. There has been no action by either of our senators, nor have our members of congress made the final push to get CDC to send the vaccines we need. That’s where you come in.

I ask you for help. Please help me by contacting our Senators and representatives to ask them to put pressure on CDC to save Washingtonians vulnerable to this disease. We need a lot more vaccine. We have maybe 6 percent of what we need to protect just Seattle itself, much less the entire state.

Please help. Pick up the phone, and tell them to pick up their phones and call CDC.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

David Bart

Olympia