Politico: Will A COVID-19 Vaccine Be Trump’s October Surprise?https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/07/23/politico-will-covid-19-vaccine-trumps-october-surprise/Are we supposed to be suspicious of motives if the US produces a working and effective vaccine? Politico seems a bit suspicious of the Trump administration’s motives to fast-track a vaccine to end a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and has brought economic activity to a near-standstill. They worry that Trump’s trying to rush a vaccine before it can be proven safe, or perhaps will just claim one has been found even if nothing is ready to use by early November:
... The White House’s Operation Warp Speed has poured billions of dollars into developing a vaccine in record time, funding several efforts in parallel and buying up doses of the experimental shots in a wager that one will ultimately pay off. …
There is virtually no chance that the U.S. will have a proven vaccine by Election Day, several top vaccine experts told POLITICO. It could also take well into 2021 to produce and distribute the hundreds of millions of shots needed to inoculate the entire country.
Yet at the same time, drugmakers’ sprint through early clinical trials means leading vaccine candidates could begin to show indications of their effectiveness by late October, offering Trump the opportunity to seize on them as a potential game-changer.
So, once again, if a vaccine is not ready by year's end it's Trump's fault (even though the Feds started working with at least one vaccine maker well before the end of January!). And if a vaccine is ready by October or November, it's suspicious? Anyone who's actually paid a reasonable amount of attention knows that the various vaccines are being tested properly. One vaccine candidate is well into the final pre-release test phase, and another candidate either just began or will within days. And anyone who's paid a reasonable amount of attention also knows that the various vaccine manufacturers have been setting up capacity to produce and distribute 100s of millions of doses. So if Politico is unpleasantly surprised by an announcement of a vaccine being available in October or November, it's because they've been too Trump-Wasted to pay attention to what the Trump Administration has been facilitating since the second half of January.
Please forgive a little self-back-patting ... I've been saying for a couple of months that a vaccine release in Fall 2020 looked like a realistic possibility. Not because I'm brilliant, but because I have a personal interest and have been paying attention.
