NY Times: Trump Administration Deserves Credit For Speed Of Vaccine Production

[PeteS in CA]

NY Times: Trump Administration Deserves Credit For Speed Of Vaccine Production

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2021/03/10/ny-times-trump-administration-deserves-lot-credit-vaccines/

It’s not often that you see President Trump get credit for anything positive in the pages of the NY Times but it happened today. The story is about the vaccine development and rollout. It not only offers some praise to the Trump administration, it points out that the Biden administration has been playing games with expectations in an attempt to make their efforts look more significant than they are.
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In early February, Biden’s team suggested herd immunity might be nine months away. In mid-February, Kamala Harris famously claimed there was no vaccine rollout plan at all when the Biden team entered the White House and that Biden’s team was starting from scratch. This lie got 2 Pinocchios from the Post. Then there was Biden’s own “gaffe” at a CNN town hall when he seemed to say his administration didn’t have a vaccine when it came into office.

And then, miracle of miracles, at the start of March Biden announced it would be able to vaccinate everyone in the country by May. Biden literally went from saying it would take nine months in early February to saying it would take four months only three weeks later. This has been one big dog and pony show in an attempt to claim more credit than they are due.

Mr. Biden benefited hugely from the waves of vaccine production that the Trump administration had set in motion. As both Pfizer and Moderna found their manufacturing footing, they were able to double and triple the outputs from their factories.

Mr. Biden had been in office less than a month when Moderna announced that it could deliver 200 million doses by the end of May, a month earlier than scheduled, simply because it had become faster at production. Pfizer was able to shave off even more time, moving up the timetable to deliver its 200 million doses by a full two months, partly because of newfound efficiencies and partly because it was given credit for six doses per vial instead of five…

“They criticize what we did, but they are using our playbook every step of the way,” said Paul Mango, the Trump administration’s deputy chief of staff for health policy and a senior official in the crash vaccine development effort then known as Operation Warp Speed. He said Mr. Trump’s team oversaw the construction or expansion of nearly two dozen plants involved in vaccine production and invoked the Defense Production Act 18 times to ensure those factories had sufficient supplies.

To be fair, the Times points out that the Biden administration has done a few things that it does deserve credit for. It used the Defense Production Act to force one of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine bottlers to move to 24/7 operation to prevent it from falling behind. And it helped broker a deal between J & J and Merck, though the Times points out that deal won’t make much of a difference in the near term. “The main benefit of the partnership will come later in the year, when Merck will have retooled a huge plant with the capacity to produce as many as 100 million doses of vaccine a month, they said.”

Yeah, well, the NYT wasn't challenging the Biden-Harris anti-Trump-Vaccine FUD campaign back before the election. Nor were the MSM reporting what Trump's OWS set in motion.

* Rather than putting US vaccine-eggs in one basket, OWS worked with at least seven vaccine developers.

* The developers chosen had development and testing schedules that would result in staggered approvals.

* The developers chosen used different technologies in their vaccines.

* OWS arranged for extra production facilities, fill-finish capacity, necessaries such as vials, syringes, needles, and disposable miscellanies, and distribution logistics and channels.

IOW, it was a full-scope, well planned effort, not just getting vaccines developed and tested.

As John Sexton pointed out, Biden trying to exaggerate the significance of what he has done does not mean Biden has done nothing. Besides the Merck deal - which came after Merck abandoned the vaccine it was testing - Biden also exercised another 100M dose option each with Moderna and Pfizer. Credit given where credit was due, the benefits of Biden's actions won't happen until around the June time frame. Everything happening now is what Trump set in motion and Moderna's and Pfizer's advances up the learning curve. And if/when Dynavax, AstraZeneca, Inovio, and Vaxart receive approvals for their vaccines, that will trigger purchase contracts negotiated by Trump and OWS.

[PeteS in CA]

Rather than proliferate threads ...

'The mess we inherited': Biden leans heavily on Trump's 'Warp Speed' but won't give credit

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mess-inherited-biden-leans-heavily-trumps-warp-speed/story?id=76186823

Despite calls for national unity and bipartisanship, President Joe Biden and his top aides have declined to give the Trump administration credit on the nation's COVID-19 vaccine rollout while relying heavily on a system established by their predecessors.

... many of Biden's public "wins" on the vaccine, including expanding supply and distributing doses to local pharmacies, are tied directly to efforts initiated by policy aides working under Trump before he left office. ...
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Those statements though aren't entirely accurate. While Biden has purchased additional vaccine supply, it was always expected that Pfizer and Moderna would ramp up their supply throughout the year.

Also, Biden's playbook for vaccine distribution has relied heavily on a system created by the Trump administration, including federal partnerships with state officials and agreements with local pharmacies. In fact, the federal pharmacy program created by Trump aides is what Biden relied on last week to expand eligibility to teachers.

And when Biden called for "100 million shots in 100 days" -- a pace of about 1 million shots per day -- former health officials noted that the U.S. had already hit that pace the week of Biden's inauguration in mid January.

"Of course we had a plan, and of course we executed on that plan, and that's why we are where we are," Adm. Brett Giroir, who served as assistant secretary for health and as COVID-19 testing coordinator under President Donald Trump, said in an interview.
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When Biden took office, it's true that the U.S. government hadn't ensured that it would have enough supply to cover every adult with vaccines already authorized by federal regulations.

But that's in part because Trump officials last year were eyeing a third vaccine -- Johnson & Johnson -- that only required one shot, was easier to handle and was on the cusp of authorization.

Under Trump, the U.S. agreed to buy enough doses for 200 million adults from vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna with "options" to buy more if necessary. It also had purchased enough J&J vaccine to buy supply for 100 million adults once authorized -- enough supply to cover every U.S. adult by summer.

WRT the last couple of paragraphs, Trump's M and P purchases almost sufficed to vaccinate those eligible, because both have minimum permissible ages. Thus, with J & J, there will be almost enough available for all Americans. While Biden's purchases from M and P may not be numerically necessary, when made the purchases were prudently not putting US vaccine-eggs in one basket.

I'll repeat, while Biden has done some useful things - I'm honest enough to recognize and give credit where credit is due, unlike Biden & Crew - effects of his actions will not begin to happen until June and later. More repetition, when Biden's party line was his FUD campaign against Trump Vaccines, ABC Skews was a faithful parrot in the MSM parrot choir.