Guy Benson over at Townhall picked up on an interesting New York Times piece by David Leonhardt which basically seems to conclude conservative governments on a national and state level are generally doing much better at vaccine distribution than are more leftist ones.

That’s not just here, but looking generally around the world.

Over the last few weeks, as vaccination has become a top priority, the pattern has changed. Progressive leaders in much of the world are now struggling to distribute coronavirus vaccines quickly and efficiently: Europe’s vaccination rollout “has descended into chaos,” as Sylvie Kauffmann of Le Monde, the French newspaper, has written. One of the worst performers is the Netherlands, which has given a shot to less than 2 percent of residents. Canada (at less than 3 percent) is far behind the U.S. (about 8.4 percent). Within the U.S., many Democratic states — like California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and tiny Rhode Island — are below the national average. “The parts of the country that pride themselves on taking Covid seriously and believing in government are not covering themselves in glory,” The Times’s Ezra Klein has written.

As opposed to actually getting it done with conservative governments.

At the same time, there are clear success stories in places that few people would describe as progressive. Alaska and West Virginia have the two highest vaccination rates among U.S. states, with Oklahoma and the Dakotas also above average. Globally, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have the highest rates. Britain — run by Boris Johnson, a populist Conservative — has vaccinated more than 15 percent of residents. International patterns are rarely perfect, and this one has plenty of exceptions…So far, though, it’s hard to find many progressive governments that are vaccination role models.

This is one of the basic differences between Republicans and Democrats, the GOP gets things done. Democrats talk a lot. It’s also one of the reasons Democrats are so terrible with money because they have no idea how to do anything efficiently, including handling money and they spend like water. But apparently, it isn’t just a thing here, it’s an ethos in how things are handled around the world.

Leonhardt’s rationale for the difference was fascinating.

According to him, “some progressive leaders are effectively sacrificing efficiency for what they consider to be equity.” In other words, they’re spending all their time talking about rules and who should get it and preventing others from getting it. As Benson observes, they’re more concerned with “fairness” than actually “getting the job done.” That delay could be killing those more at risk.

Across New York State, medical providers have had “to throw out precious vaccine doses because of difficulties finding patients who matched precisely with the state’s strict vaccination guidelines — and the steep penalties they would face had they made a mistake.”

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 5, 2021

That, of course, is insane. Why would anyone throw it out and not just hand it out to someone? Because it violates their parameters of “fairness.”

With Democrats, you also have the failure to properly identify the problem and concentrating on the wrong things even beyond “fairness.”

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain speaks with @LesterHoltNBC about the plan to send masks to every American.

"We're gonna do whatever we can to make masks more available to people."

Tune in to @NBCNightlyNews at 6:30 ET / 5:30 CT for more (check your local listings). pic.twitter.com/b0TusxmI2p

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 4, 2021

At this point, if someone doesn’t have some form of a mask it’s because they made a conscious choice not to do so, otherwise, there’s no person who is truly short of getting one.

But when they’re concentrated on stupid things like that, they’re not doing what they really should be doing.

This was the same problem with how Biden and his then-coronavirus “czar” reacted back last year in February and March, responding to the news of President Donald Trump cutting travel with China, saying it was “hysterical xenophobia” (Biden) and that we had more to fear from prejudice about it (Klain). Democrats initially spent time urging people to go out and go to the Chinese New Year Parade (crowds). Biden didn’t even say he thought it was correct to cut travel with China and Europe, as President Trump had done, until April 2. Imagine if he had been in power and took that long to react because he was afraid about offending China or that it might somehow indicate “xenophobia” or be “unfair.” It would have been exponentially worse. Not to mention the vaccines are only here because of the business thought of Trump, combining government and private enterprise to hasten the process. Would Biden have even thought that way? Doubtful. As Ron Klain confessed about how they dealt with the H1N1 pandemic, they were only saved because it was not particularly lethal; that “we did everything wrong.”