I think korin43 has it right.
Notably, the article you quote cites the US as doing more poorly than the UK, one of the only large countries to outperform the US in both your rankings. I agree that I’ve seen a number of articles in that vein, but none of them seem to compare the US to countries other than Israel and the UK.
In comparison with the EU however, US vaccine procurement looks incredible. I’ll cite a relatively neutral google news search (https://www.google.com/search?q=EU+vaccine+procurement&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=nws). For future readers: at the moment this shows many news sources saying things like “why has EU procurement been so bad”.
Honestly I think the celebrations stopped being “valued” by the people who could organize them.
A big celebration involves a lot of planning effort and a fair bit of cash. And it can easily wind up looking like there was substantial corruption in choice of vendors, etc.
On top of that, for cash strapped local govs, the Q “can this money be better spent elsewhere” is real and all consuming.