- Billionaire investor Bill Ackman tweeted on Tuesday, slamming logistical failures in the US vaccine rollout.
- “If Elon Musk can deliver 500k Teslas and Jeff Bezos can provide same-hour delivery, we can vaccinate every American” he tweeted.
- As of January 4, the US has vaccinated fewer than five million people.
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Billionaire investor Bill Ackman tweeted criticisms of the US rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. He called it a “failure of logistics and mismanagement during the transition” in a series of tweets on January 5.
—Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 5, 2021
Ackman, CEO of the hedge fund Pershing Square, criticized the prolonged vaccine rollout as cases continue to increase. The pandemic continues to break records, with average daily cases surpassing 275,000, and more than 350,000 people in the US have now died of COVID-19, according to The COVID Tracking Project.
A record 3900 people died on December 30. Vaccinations so far have been chaotic, as health departments lack staff or expertise to administer the vaccine and get doses to the right places and as of January 4 fewer than 5 million people in the US had been vaccinated.
In a follow-up tweet, Ackman said that there was no logistical excuse for botching the vaccinations.
“If Elon Musk can deliver 500k Teslas and Jeff Bezos can provide same-hour delivery, we can vaccinate every American. The time is now!” he wrote, referring to the CEOs of Tesla and Amazon.
—Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 5, 2021
In a follow-up tweet, Ackman said the mismanagement of the vaccine "seems like genocide" of the elderly.
"We are killing the Greatest Generation ... If the virus killed mostly children rather than the aged, would we sit back and allow this to happen?" he wrote, alluding to ageism.
Pershing Square did not respond to Business Insider's request for further comment on Ackman's tweets.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC News' Martha Raddatz on Sunday that vaccinations could speed up soon. He said that the US could be vaccinating one million people each day.
Ackman's Pershing Square fund posted a 70% return in 2020, much of which was realized from the firm's anticipation of the pandemic's devastating effects on business early in the year through credit-default swaps.