re: #131 lawhawk

Trump: Operation Warp Speed made vaccines happen and available and will get them distributed.

Reality: Operation Warp Speed appears to have enriched Trump cronies, and hasn’t actually led to vaccines developed any faster than if they were developed elsewhere in the world. Trump’s taking credit for a Pfizer vaccine that was developed by a subsidiary in Germany.

The UK just approved a vaccine for distribution before the US. Expect other countries to follow suit in short order.

What we are missing here in the US is transparency on how vaccines will be distributed and the order of priority - from health professionals, those in hospitals/facilities like nursing homes, and then to the general population. Trump’s already threatened to delay distribution to states whose governors aren’t kowtowing to him.

So yeah, Warp Speed turned out to be another grift play and empty promises. It was a slogan and not much more.

Sorry I will knock Trump for most everything he did but not that. The US government provided funding that made the Moderna vaccine possible, and provided billions to support the clinical trials of multiple vaccines. While Pfizer didn’t take government money to fund the research and development, the government did very early on sign guarantees for billions of dollars in purchases for any vaccine that reached approval for them.

Those government guarantees and funding allowed companies to begin mass production in parallel with testing so that once it is approved millions of doses will be ready almost immediately. Trump threw all his eggs in the vaccine basket, and while it probably cost 10’s of thousands of lives by ignoring all of the other mitigation factors, they absolutely accelerated the vaccine time table.