Acting Deputy Secretary Ken CuccinelliVerified account

(4/4) I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. -Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken"

(3/4) And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

(2/4) Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

(1/4) Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

(13/x) ... saving THOUSANDS of lives for every single day we cut off between today and the defeat/control of the virus.

(12/x) As is so often the case, the best thing the feds could do is stop trying to direct everything & turn the states loose to vaccinate as fast as they reasonably can. Math says that our nation will defeat the virus faster this way ...

(11/x) Keep in mind, that even people who end up at the back of the line benefit from this approach, b/c the virus is largely (not completely) defeated/controlled before they ever even get vaccinated (a public health concept, btw).

(10/x) If the priority categories were not mandated (Note: I know this doesn't describe every state, but it's twitter folks...), but instead vaccines were distributed as widely & quickly as possible, R naught would plunge, & we could truly begin to defeat the virus. It's math.

(9/x) the logistical challenges of distributing the vaccines are already difficult. Restricting the allowable recipient population to only a small fraction of the total population badly exacerbates the distribution problems &-most critically-slows down the reduction of R naught.

(8/x) The 2 highest prioritized populations are health care workers (high frequency virus contact=higher likelihood of getting infected) and elderly/infirm (higher risk if infection happens). It is logical why these two categories are at the top of the priority list; however,...

(7/x) It is understood that the key in fighting a virus is getting R naught below 1.0 as quickly as possible. The key to that is the widest possible distribution of vaccines as fast as possible. This is at odds with only making the vaccines available to prioritized populations.

(6/x) And the reason this lesson is important going forward is so we don't knee-jerkingly rely on the same old (19th century?) public health approach as the sole basis to make decisions, specifically, re: vaccine distribution.

(5/x) Of course, this assumes the use of the medical information that we did know. So, to be clear, we use medical information & expertise, but when confronted by a new threat w/no analogous predecessor, math+appreciation for uncertainty is a better guide...

(4/x) Math, coupled with appreciation for the significance of uncertainty (i.e., accounting for the massive amount we didn't know & couldn't know quickly), made more sense as the highest priority decision filter.

(3/x) ... but neither certainty nor data existed. Yet they insisted on it. Result? Slower appreciation for the threat of covid. What would have been a better decision-making approach?

(2/x) It is easy to understand why we would rely so completely on the advice of traditional public health experts, but Covid was a new bug, particularly due to the asymptomatic spread. Traditional public health wanted certainty and data to make decisions,...

(1/x) On this my last day @DHSgov, I have a remaining policy thought to offer. Looking back to the beginning of Covid, I would respectfully suggest that there was a better way to make overarching decisions about where we were in the virus progression.

.@DHSgov has come to the same conclusion, and will take appropriate measures to deny presence in the United States to aliens who have participated in this genocide--which is a bar to admission to the United States under the INA.