This corrupt administration is using financial incentives to corrupt the the development of a vaccine by encouraging short cuts and nepotism. These things do not build confidence in the end product. A vaccine that is injected into your bloodstream. I am not an anti vaxxer, but I will not take this vaccine.
15
One aspect not mentioned is which companies are stockpiling the vaccine before we know the result. If Pfizer is already sitting on 50 million doses they could move quickly if provisionally approved. The same is true for Moderna and AstraZeneca.
5
Does the word obscene come to mind? How about corrupt? Science does not respond to incentives offered by a (self-serving) politician. The only thing these “incentives” can do is sway leaders, without a commitment to facts and proof, to fudge the answers. The government should not be dangling such incentives, and Pfizer certainly should not be entertaining them. My view of each has been diminished.
8
It's insane that Trump would jeopardize the already shaky trust Americans have in vaccines by his politicizing of the release timing.
11
Beware of Scott Gottlieb, MD who is frequently on the television pundit circuit. He recently joined the Pfizer board.
5
Let's let the Proud Boys Stand Up and lead the way with this vaccine.
15
I find it incredible that Pfizer would play with the health of human beings just to satisfy an egomaniac in the White House, but they seem to be intent on doing so.
7
I can understand how companies can show efficacy pretty quickly.
I don’t know how they can show safety. For instance, how many women will be vaccinated, get pregnant, and give birth during the trial period? If none, how will we know if a vaccine causes an increase in birth defects? (A more minor issue: how will we know how long the vaccine works?)
So, my guess is that the contracts that trump signed with the drug companies must give those companies liability protection.
10
Wait. This is America.
If Pfizer announces a vaccine too early and turns out to be a hoax - the lawyers will rush to the courts so fast as to create a traffic jam.
Pfizer could even go bankruot.
So, I expect their lawyers are playing a decisive role in these discussions.
But this race to a vaccine - is a good thing.
Drs Crick and Watson with their Double Helix come to mind about this race to announce a discovery.
When they realized a rival chemist was about to make an announcement, they rushed theirs forward.
And I have said this before - when POTUS announces a successful vaccine - Biden protesting - the Dow Jones will race past 30,000 to make your head spin.
3
@Neil. It all depends on the definition of “successful vaccine”: one that reduces infection rate? Or one that is proven safe too? Is it guaranteed that all side effects will show up within a couple of weeks?
Read up on the Pres Ford H1N1 vaccine in 1976.
10
The discovery of the double helix in a laboratory is a lot different than the proof of safety and efficacy of a vaccine for human immunization.
11
Why are you rooting for a late vaccine? Neither Trump nor Biden can do anything about it. If it works - use it - whenever. Your creepy dislike of anything Trump is not helpful. Sometimes he is overly optimistic. Why do you root for pessimism? You live in a very dark world.
6
No one is rooting for a late vaccine. We’re all rooting for a timely vaccine that has been reasonably confirmed to be likely efficacious and likely safe - that still takes more than a few weeks.
26
I continue to be amazed at how many of our "experts" in viral medicine are professors, who are criticizing, while creating nada. Every one of our 5000, four year schools, seems to have at least one viral expert. How and why are they experts?
@Benkarkis What features would you accept for someone who you would respect for their opinion on the virus? Do they need to know anything about viruses? Do they need to know anything about testing medicines? Do they need to know anything about statistics? Do they need to know anything about safety in using medicines?
Do you find these characteristics in people in the auto industry? Do you find these characteristics in TV producers? Do you find these characteristics in political scientists?
Would you expect to find people you trust in medical schools? Would you expect to find people you trust in schools of public health?
Would you expect to find these people in biochemistry departments?
11
Thank you for such a well written and well thought comment.
Here’s what happens when businesses or even individuals get big financial incentives to get something done faster than expected : they cut corners and cheat. I need that vaccine. I’ll WAIT.
17
Looks a lot like insider trading, if you ask me.
9
@Ronnie especially with Moderna. No proven vaccine ever. One billion already provided by the USG. A stock value that went through the roof with again zero proven product. Time to sell.
9
All Trump had to do was follow the NSC Playbook that was developed under Obama. (Wonder why Biden didn't bring THAT up last night!). But that was an Obama product, so he destroyed it, just like he's trying to destroy the ACA.
That playbook should have been followed early on, and coordinated with the efforts of many other countries.
Now, with the current pandemic mess, nobody I know is going to jump on the bandwagon and sign up for an early vaccination. We'll wait for the full trials and analyses as conducted by real scientists, thank you. Fauci said last week that he didn't expect any semblance of normality until the end of next year, with a lot of "ifs" preceding that statement!
Hang on, hunker down, ask for help if you need it (because it is not coming from Republicans), and ride it out as best you can.
14
I worked for Pfizer for over a decade. I don't trust them at all. This is a completely marketing-driven company.
24
Prediction: The reality is that, best case scenario, the coronavirus vaccine will be similar to the flu vaccine. It will be between 50-70% effective, and maybe 50-60% of the country will be willing to take it (unless it is mandated by schools and workplaces). This will prevent outbreaks that necessitate lockdowns and social distancing, and allow us to mostly return to normalcy, but the coronavirus will always be lurking just like influenza, with limited community transmission every winter and spring. People will still have a chance to catch it, whether they get the shot or not. So for those "I'm not doing anything until a vaccine comes and I'm petrified about long-term symptoms" people, they will be wearing masks and isolating themselves for years to come. There will be some people who will be too afraid to send their kids to school even 5 years from now, even though the mortality risk to young children is no worse than influenza. It is going to take maybe a decade to undo the panic, misinformation, and sensationalism perpetuated by the liberal media whose primary goal has been to make Covid as big and bad as possible in people's minds in order to unseat Trump. Maybe this gambit will be worth it if Trump is truly as bad for the country as some think he is. But those people who cannot escape this trance post-vaccine will have their quality of life degraded over time (refusal to attend weddings, attend in-person school, travel, eat indoors, etc).
4
@Brody Your prediction is a vaccine will be effective in 25%- 42% of the population after everyone who is willing to take it actually takes it. You assert that will eliminate the need for social distancing to prevent outbreaks.
Well according to the experts, Even your best case of 42% immunity isn't large enough number to prevent large covid outbreaks. Mainly because of how highly infectious it is. Adding in 2% who may have already contracted covid doesn't change that situation. A much higher immunity approaching 80% immunity is required to prevent large outbreaks.
Even with a vaccine you predict, the only way large outbreaks can be controlled will be more effective treatment that reduces the severity and morbidity of covid.
7
@Brody The populations of England and Belgium, Spain and Italy, India and Australia are not reading the "liberal media" and are not worried about the election of the US President. They are worried about their own families and future.
16
@Brody: You do the nation no service to treat a worldwide pandemic as some sort of local short-term political ploy by those Donald Trump calls his enemies. You need to give up this short-sighted paranoia before you do the nation and its people more harm. Can you do that?
18
It is unlikely. The need for emergency procedures in vetting vaccines was recognized decades ago. The emergency procedures for Covid-19 were established months ago. Everything was fine, but only until it looked like a vaccine might be available before the election. Then people complained about safety. It's not safety, it's politics. Politics that are more important than people's lives to those playing the game.
3
"Around 15 percent of vaccines in late-stage trials do not make it to approval." Read the reference - it says 15% DO make it to approval.
6
Pfizer can continue to join Trump in his charade. All it means is that I certainly won’t be taking ANY vaccine or drug manufactured by them henceforth.
The market will truly decide.
8
“Right now, our model — our best case — predicts that we will have an answer by the end of October,”
In a statistical bell curve, best case is typically an outlier, less than 10% chance of reality.
I am more interested in the statistical average, the middle of the bell curve, what does that tell us?
Also, having an ‘answer’ by the end of October is hardly having 200 million doses of approved, effective vaccine ready for inoculations.
More smoke and mirrors by trump and his sycophants.
12
So Pfizer says that, by the end of a October, so critical to Trump’s re-election, they will announce that their vaccine works. This is of course partly to gin the competition with other manufacturers. Sort of like coffeehousing other poker players with an announcement that they will have all the cards, to drive others to fold early. It is also partly to curry favor with the White House, and to reduce bothersome regulatory oversight of safety and effectiveness determinations.
In a world of informed consumers of health care, I can easily find out who makes my drugs, and specify if I wish whose drugs I will not use. The upshot here is that I will decline this COVID vaccine and any other Pfizer product, now and forever, period. The gamble Pfizer is taking is that the no-maskers and hoax theorists, Trumpistas all, will decide in sufficient numbers that it isn’t a hoax after all, and go for the vaccine. But of course, why would they. I think that, ultimately, Pfizer will be stuck with a bunch of vaccine that smart folk won’t use because they don’t trust the Pfizer/Trump connection, and the rubes won’t use because they have been convinced it isn’t necessary. Doesn’t Pfizer have a board that is smart enough to see this for the disaster that it may become?
8
We have never cured any disease, not even the common cold - most certainly not the flu (of which Covid is a variety).
1
@Henry Um, well, we do cure many diseases. There aren't many viral infectious that are cured. We can mitigate symptoms (e.g. shingles) or blunt the severity of infection (influenza vaccine when it doesn't prevent the infection) or we can prevent the viral infection completely (polio). But other diseases, particularly bacterial infections caused by susceptible bacteria respond well to appropriate antibiotics.
4
Trump cannot be trusted.
If Trump pushes Pfizer to announce a vaccine before it is fully tested they will loose trust in people as well.
Trump is desperate, and this push to announce a vaccine before it is properly tested smells of that desperation. No one should take a vaccine until it is fully tested, and trustworthy medical experts (Fauci) say it’s ready to go
9
A vaccine “might” show some effectiveness during The month of October...but, if you watch the mid September Pfizer corporate “Updates on Covid-19 research, available on-Line, The challenges of production, transportation, and distribution are many. no one is gonna be able to walk into the local CVS or Walgreens and get it like they should be getting their FLU shot.
The corporation needs to make this clear! Otherwise it is making itself a pawn in a dangerous game. And the population will be the further victims.
3
@Nancy Connors I agree about the practicalities of implementation. But public sentiment and behavior in critical situations is more about expectations for the future than the immediate situation. Simply knowing that a safe/effective vaccine has been produced will cause huge public relief, hope, and return to their former life priorities.
You may notice that this article quotes more Wall Street Analysts than medical experts. That's because analysts' expertise is predicting peoples' future behavior under different scenarios.
1
I'm not taking any vaccine touted by the murderers in the Trump White House.
Not in October, not in November, not ever.
I hope that any drug company that participates in such a scam, even one as large as Pfizer, is put out of business for good.
6
I will not be vaccinated, no matter what Trump, Fauci, Birx, or any "scientists" say. No way.
2
Like many regulatory agencies, the oversight of the FDA is anemic and its powers have been gutted. As for the corruption of Pfizer:
https://www.corp-research.org/pfizer
4
A lot of people seem very distrustful of the safety (not efficacy) of a potential vaccine, which is rather worrisome. As a biochemist, two months seems to me to be a very reasonable amount of time for any immune-related side effects to present. And vaccines as a class are one of the safest medical interventions we have. Of course we will have to wait and see what the data show, but if side effects are no worse than fever and injection site soreness, you have the risk to benefit determination skewed by not taking this during a pandemic. As much as Trump is trying to take credit for this, I truly don't believe things would be progressing any slower under, say, a president Obama, and I don't think people would be pushing back as much at these timelines. Of course, Trump should keep his mouth closed and not try to make this about him, but I think the idea that he can force government scientists to approve something that is not ready is much overstated. Let's not give him any more credit or prejudge the outcome just yet.
5
@Eric
As a non-biochemist, I have one word for you: thalidomide.
It took a couple of years of term pregnancies with severe physical disabilities of the babies to figure out that thalidomide was dangerous.
13
@Eric
The reason vaccines are one of the safest medications we have is because they're the most tested medications we have. Reducing the testing reduces safety.
It isn't just time that reveals vaccine side effects. It's mostly about the number of people who've taken it. A severe side effect that affects just .01% would mean 35,000 people in the US.
Trump is hardly acting alone. He has a large cadre motivated by things other than personal ego who enthusiastically do Trump's bidding. By and large, they are more capable to implement the actions that that Trump is incompetent to accomplish.
3
@Dan every time my daughter, who is in the medical field, but young, asks about the need for the FDA, I use that one word answer. Every adverse side effect does not show up right away. I do believe the same thing happened with the live polio vaccine.
7
In terms of the election, in any rational world, a vaccine that is approved in October should make no difference. It cannot erase the fact that tens of thousands of deaths have happened due to Trump's botched response to the pandemic. Those lives will never be restored. It does not change the fact that Trump is the least competent, most erratic and dangerous man to occupy the WH. The triumph, if and when it arrives, will be that of the scientists that Trump is so eager to discount and disparage when the facts don't comport with his re-election goals. Don't let this be spun into some great achievement by Trump, whose only goal is to save himself.
16
@Michele Elections are more about expectations for the future than observations on the past. Of course past performance is a indicator of the future. In this situation, a approved vaccine well before experts' predictions would tend to validate Trump's actions for that topic, even in rational people's minds.
FWIW people often credit the person in leadership when something good(or bad) happens, regardless of who actually contributed to achieving the outcome. History is littered with unsung, unrecognized, and forgotten people of accomplishment.
I don't think any honest scientist believes that a vaccine would be ready for distribution by the end of October. My guess is that Pfizer will announce some (promising) preliminary results before the election and Trump will spin that into "We've got a vaccine ready to go" even though it will be months before the clinical trial is actually finalized and distribution begins.
Trump couldn't care less about actually having a safe and effective vaccine for the American people. He just wants to be able to point to something that makes him look good.
37
As an Infectious Disease specialist, with 40 years experience treating people, not in academia, I have experience with Pfizer, and BigPharma. Let me be clear from the start, they can 'lie' with the 'best' of them. If Pfizer announces a vaccine based on the limited data available, they're exaggerating at best. Keep in mind that they have a lot of incentive to push the vaccine early, and legal protection if at some point it is shown to have unexpected side effects or toxicities.
If trumps "October surprise" is a vaccine before Nov 3rd, it is a hollow promise. And even I might refuse to take the vaccine.
49
Amen, brother!
4
Thank you for your thoughts that appear to be come a reasonable mind and not strictly professional.
3
@dcarlson I made a mistake! It should have read "...and not strictly political."
2
Pfizer doesn't seem to be claiming that they might be ready for approval in October.
"Pfizer will not be anywhere near completion of its clinical trial by the end of October, according to a company spokeswoman. When Dr. Bourla referred to a “conclusive readout” next month, she said, he meant that it’s possible the outside board of experts monitoring the trial would have by that date found promising signs that the vaccine works."
To clarify, she thinks they may have a good impression of how well the vaccine works on October. HOWEVER, safety is much harder to prove than efficacy, so she's really not claiming it will be ready for approval for the general population.
5
Dr B is a man. Full video is available on line via Pfizer
3
@Kiki Thanks! I watched the video, and it does appear that Bourla is saying that it might be ready for approval by the end of October. I'm not sure if the spokeswoman was trying to walk that back a bit or not.
@Nancy Connors Thanks! I confused Dr B gender with that of the spokeswoman clarifying his comments.
Nobody with a brain is going to trust a vaccine approved by the Trump administration before the election. They have proven to be relentlessly dishonest and contually willing to pervert science and truth for political gain. And the incentive on their part and the company’s to slant the data are far too obvious.
Trying to rush this thing out before its efficacy and safety are truly proven is going to substantially harm, rather than help, our efforts to contain this pandemic and return to some semblance of normal life.
17
Machiavelli argued the secret to dominance is influence. Bourla's ridiculous claims deliberately exceed what other companies say, to signal investors he knows political influence is power, and power is money.
Others were lured by the gov'ts Covid-19 money. Pfizer sees the disease as a way to restore its industry primacy. Others avoid politics. Machiavellian Pfizer wants to engage in politics, because that's where power lies.
In 2014 Pfizer tried to negotiate buying AstraZeneca. When that didn't happen, they tried a hostile take-over. It's about politics, baby. Pfizer wanted the effort to fuel stock rise: buying AZ would lower taxes. But the 2014 US Treasury blocked its proposed tax inversion, damping the fizzle, and dousing the take-over.
Big institutional investors - Black Rock, Vanguard - own 70% of shares. Virtual silent partners, they demand more. Bourla’s public antics are aimed at them, as much as the Trump administration. He'll get in the mud pit, because he knows where the power is.
Does this have anything to do with vaccine efficacy, safety, science?
Machiavelli laughs.
13
@Brian It was Allergan they were attempting to buy, but yeah, I'm glad it was blocked.
2
@Eric They were blocked in the Allergan deal in 2015. Year before they were blocked in the AZ deal. Both were efforts to lower their tax, the reason they were blocked.
2
Go ahead, Trump.....announce a vaccine. Then see how many Americans are actually willing to take it. My guess is that while the Proud Boyz will line up in droves, thinking Americans will stay away until it is adequately vetted by a new CDC and FDA under a new administration.
11
@Cathlynn Groh
The Proud Boys don’t think the virus is real, and so will pass on the vaccine.
5
@Cathlynn Groh How many take it doesn't matter to Trump because merely the announcement will help him get elected. Similarly, Pfizer will reap political benefits from announcing early if Trump is elected. In fact, to a fair degree, Pfizer's announcement is the topic of this article.
1
The Trump administration's entire response to COVID has been driven only by Mr. Trump's ultimately political and totally selfish desire/design to retain his office. Mr Trump will undermine anything. In his desperation he is actaully willfully forcing older people to be willing to die from COVID to bolster his reelection chances. Operation warp speed will likely turn out to be one of the largest waste of funds ever authorized by any government given how it has been managed by individuals with only very short term political agendas and motivations. Pfizer's CEO embarrasses himself, his company, the integrity of the vaccine creation process, medicine, and science by pandering to Trump. Pharmaceutical Companies and their boards and executives need to take the same oath to protect their patients as doctors do. Presidents and all elected official in the United states be made to swear their own Hippocratic oath under which the citizen -patient comes first and that they as politicians will cause no harm. Not that Comrade Trump would understand his duties , not to act in his own interests (political or economic) under that oath or the one he has already taken.
5
No matter how Trump would like to push it, there is no way you can speed up the data gathering of a vaccine trial. No matter how effective Pfizer might be as a manufacturer, Mother Nature has her own time course and we will not have the data needed until there are enough actual infections with the Covid-19 virus to adequately evaluate effectiveness and safety
1
It's already tainted by Trump's self-serving promises. No thanks.
9
on September 3, pfizer's ceo said it could have phase 3 results in october and and today said the "best case" could mean an answer by the end of october. the trial won't be over.
just a few days ago,j ohnson & johnson, which also has a vaccine in phase 3 trials, said it could have results at the end of the year.
pfizer's vaccine is a messenger RNA (mRNA) type and it is a new approach compared to traditional attenuated virus vaccines. mRNA vaccines trick the body into making antibodies.
virus vector vaccines use another type of virus to get into cells, drop off a gene that can't reproduce and inactivates covid-19.
i don't trust trump to tell the truth - i want the trials completed and get advice from my own doctor - an infectious disease expert who once worked for dr. fauci - to tell me it's ok to get vaccinated and which vaccine to use. i am fine social distancing and staying home until then. it has already been about 7 months - what's a few more months to have an approved safety determination rather than risk the possibility of as-yet unknown side effects?
during gerald ford's administration, an H1N1 vaccine was pushed through and hundreds ended up with guillain barre syndrome and some died. another event like that would only make it worse.
9
I think if this happens, donald and ivanka should be the very first to take this, on live TV, with a witness.
12
@POLITICS 995
He'd just go with a distilled water injection and say it was vaccine.
4
It doesn't matter at all how quickly you announce a vaccine that doesn't work.
That's like me saying I can misspell a word faster than you.
Except, you know, people might die, or experience unnecessary side effects. Or think they are healthy and make the pandemic worse. Pshhh. Details, am I right?
5
@DP It matters a lot to election candidates and financial speculators/investors.
I am sure if a person takes a drug companies vaccine it will be with the person accepting and signing a no lawsuit agreement. If any vaccine comes out early the maker should be willing to give excessively large compensation to anyone having any side effects. Put This in front of the drug makers and they will make sure the vaccine is as safe as possible, still with all kinds of legal limitations. Is it warp speed or a Trumpian warped speed for election purposes?
1
@Wapati 409 You're uninformed. By law, vaccine manufacturers have no civil liability
42 U.S. (par.)300aa-22
(1) No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.
I don't know about anyone else but I won't consider a vaccine safe until 3-6 Months after the trials are completed. Side effects don't necessarily show up immediately.
4
@alan
It wasn’t a vaccine, but thalidomide side effects didn’t show up until women taking it had given birth. That’s why all these protocols Pfizer/Trump want to skip were put in place to begin with.
5
@alan And sometimes not for years. Look into a drug called Trovan (trovofloxacin)
3
@alan I will wait until the vaccine is also approved/authorized by the EMEA (Europe) or the MHRA (UK).
3
Surprisingly, the CEO of one of the world's largest pharmaceutical corporations is trying to win favor with Donald Trump. What's in it for him? I expected a drug maker to be very cautious in statements about their products. Pfizer is deciding to go in a different direction. Consumers, to protect themselves, need to ask their doctors, "doctor who made this vaccine?"
4
@blgreenie - "What's in it for him?" In a rare instance of clarity, Pfizers' motives are clear: (i) $1.95 Billion (!) for first 100 million doses, and (ii) they took no government money for R&D so they are free of scrutiny when they price it. They stand to make a lot of money. Based on the likely timelines for these leading vaccines, meaningful information will come out post-election so hopefully that increases people's willingness to take them.
2
@blgreenie If Trump win, Pfizer will be his favorite to win contracts at Pfizer's price. If Trump loses, Pfizer will be no worse off than if they hadn't made this announcement. All upside, no downside.
1
Even if Pfizer has a safe vaccine available by Nov 3, the logistics of delivering 200+ million doses of an m-RNA based product that requires <-70degrees C storage will be mind-boggling. And a vaccine before the end of 2020 will not have been tested for a long enough time, no matter what Trump says, to say that it will be as effective as it should be. Benefits of a possible safe and effective vaccine must be weighed against the possibility of lower than predicted effectiveness or as yet undiscovered danger, like enhancement of virus susceptibility or virulence for certain populations as yet untested. But those decisions MUST be left to epidemiologists with scientific training not Scott Atlas and Donald Trump.
6
This entire article highlights how broken we are as a country in every way possible and how our broken state negatively impacts the entire world.
The fact that we are even discussing a rush to put out a vaccine before an election to curry favor with the president is unbelievable. And that the vaccine's safety will forever be questioned (and rightly so).
Broken.
25
Bourla is just playing along with Trump's obsession, which will not be helpful for his of Pfizer's reputation going forward.
To just review the timeline described: The trial started end of July. Even with the accelerated schedule, the earliest a "case", i.e., a Covid19 infection causing symptoms, can be counted is beginning of September.
How rapidly did they manage to enroll? AstraZeneca was about half way to the enrollment goal when they shut down temporarily a few weeks ago.
It likely took Pfizer a few weeks to get sizable numbers going - so most are only now even becoming eligible to count as cases.
And the 32 cases are only going to mean anything if the distribution between trial group is extremely lopsided, which is unlikely since the vaccine is designed to only achieve a 50% reduction in cases. Anything else will require much larger numbers of cases to reach significance, or indeed miss the goal entirely.
2
An interim data analysis after 32 cases of COVID-19 is an utterly unacceptable basis for a clinical decision that will affect a nation of 330 million people. There are several competing vaccines based on different mechanisms of action. Choosing the wrong one based on insufficient, preliminary data could have literally fatal consequences - and also waste billions of dollars. Since masks are a proven, inexpensive way to reduce COVID-19 transmission, it makes much more sense to promote (and subsidize) universal mask wearing now, and then aggressively promote a vaccine next year, when one has been proved to be safe and effective.
43
@DrBaBa Excellent comment. Thank you.
4
@DrBaBa 32 or even 56 patients may be enough to show proof of concept (i.e. it induced an antibody response in most of the sample size) We will need thousand(s) to show proof of effectiveness, and a "long" time frame to show lack of toxicity or side effects.
Any claims to the contrary before Nov 3 are likely bogus or at best just hopeful.
Use a Mask, Wash your hands.
5
Many of is in the U.S will be waiting to see what the EU and, in particular, what the German and French regulatory agencies approve.
39
@Alfred or Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, countries that have successfully managed the virus spread
2
@Alfred It's generally not individual countries but the overall European agency, the EMEA.
2
On the one hand, folks blame Trump that he did not do enough to arrest the pandemic, on the other hand, they blame him for moving earth and haven to bring a vaccine ASAP. On the one hand, they blame Trump for an economic recession caused by the shutdown, on the other hand, they blame him for not shutting down enough and early. WOW, what a contradiction.
2
@Joseph No contradiction at all. It is not either this or that; it is "and." So, Trump did not do enough to stem the pandemic AND he is rushing a vaccine to market. Trump did not do enough for the pandemic early on, allowing it to rage, AND an economic recession ensued. If you're old enough to remember the old Certs commercial, you can have a breath mint AND a candy mint at the same time!
46
Not a contradiction at all. If he had acted sooner (most transmissions came not from China at the beginning, but from Europe, especially UK, which he waited too long to ban from your country) the shutdown (completely inconsistently applies because of his failure to lead) would have had less of an impact. He isn’t “moving heaven and earth” - he’s rushing to get an improved vaccine to help his flailing electoral chances. And because of his refusal to listen to scientists about masks, he has encouraged many of you not to wear them. Do you think your country has such a terrible death toll because of his good leadership? No - FAILED leadership led to the situation you’re in. My country’s government didn’t cover it up “to prevent panic” (ha!) neither did New Zealand’s, Finland’s, Norway’s etc. - these governments respect their citizens and we are doing far far better than you. trump has NO respect for Americans, and he let many of you die unnecessarily.
19
@Maude excellent rebuttal!
1
It would be a lie should they announce such a vaccine, at most it would be unproven and quite possibly fatal, I will not be taking it.
19
I have faith in Pfizer! They gave us the wonder antibiotic, Penicillin, that to this day is among the most powerful medicines out there! Additionally, they started out in Brooklyn, where an unusually large number of beneficial enterprises and individuals were nurtured, and trace their beginnings!
2
@Counter Measures Neither point you raise has a thing to do with the subject at hand. Nostalgia and past performance mean nothing in terms of future success.
This is a dangerous game with lives at stake, not to mention the future of a company and both its stakeholders and stockholders. An artificial deadline - election day - to please a politician is certainly not in anyone's best interest. Any product, in any industry, that is introduced before thorough vetting and testing can be a disaster in so many ways. Proof? Ask the folks at Boeing about the 737 Max.
24
@Counter Measures- you sound like Trump talking about his excellent college experience.
Even if it was true, which does not seem likely, that was what? Fifty years ago?
Let's get this one right THIS time. We can shine up the plaques after we can all sit in restaurants again.
5
@Counter Measures Having faith in Pfizer because they produced penicillin decades ago is just absurd. They are a moneymaking enterprise, and Trump has presented them with an opportunity..rush a vaccine through and the US government will buy it at atmospheric prices. This is not Nig Pharma altruism...it is craven greed at its finest.
7