Giving Trump Credit For The COVID-19 Vaccine

In case you haven’t heard, the one thing — the only thing — we’re supposed to give Trump credit for according to the mainstream media is the COVID-19 vaccine. A vaccine so amazing you can get banned from Twitter for questioning it (although why would you want want to?) and one so great the companies behind it have to be shielded from lawsuits. A vaccine so amazing the CEO of Pfizer, the company behind the vaccine, refuses to take it at this moment. A vaccine so amazing it manages to be both the first vaccine for any strain of the coronavirus (including the common cold) and the first vaccine created in under a year.

When talk of a COVID-19 vaccine started, I was originally on the hype train hoping that maybe, just maybe, the President would through us a bone. However, as time has gone on I’ve become more and more skeptical of the idea, and it seems time has proven me right. On 9/7/2020, I even wrote this about the idea that we’d be getting a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year:

The idea that such a thing is possible represents more fiction than fact.

Around the same time, many mainstream media outlets said a COVID-19 vaccine was unlikely. NBC infamously tweeted out the following on 5/15/2020:

Fact check: A coronavirus vaccine could come this year, President Trump says. Experts say he needs a “miracle” to be right.

The article they linked to makes similar claims, such as this one:

“I think it’s possible you could see a vaccine in people’s arms next year — by the middle or end of next year. But this is unprecedented, so it’s hard to predict,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

And for those curious, Offit does have credentials:

Offit spent 26 years developing a vaccine for rotavirus, a common and dangerous childhood gastrointestinal illness, before it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006. He said vaccine development typically takes decades, but that efforts to counter COVID-19 are being fast-tracked by scientists, drug companies and nations — rallied by the World Health Organization — to meet the threat posed by the coronavirus, which has killed hundreds of thousands and decimated economies across the globe.

Now, I was not saying that something sold to us as a COVID-19 vaccine was impossible, far from it, just that one that is actually effective would be rather unlikely. Gerald Ford infamously rushed on a Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 during a pandemic, which ended killing more people than the strain of Swine Flu that was being vaccinated against. I was concerned (and going by the results of the Pfizer vaccine so far, still am concerned) that something similar could happen with a COVID-19 vaccine.

Of course, Trump and Operation Wrap Speed had little to do with the Pfizer vaccine that has been given out so far (although they were much more involved with a different vaccine from Moderna, which will begin being distributed today), although Trump did through some grants at them, they have been considered rather negatable in the grand scheme of things. The vaccine was not even developed in the US, but in Germany by a pair of Muslim immigrants. Although this is the same President who used stem cells as part of his COVID-19 treatment while having Mike Pence as his second in command, so what do you expect?

But remember, this vaccine is supposed to be the major success of the Trump Administration. Career Politician Mike Pence even asked Kamala Harris to “stop playing politics with people’s lives” in regards to her raising questions about it. Donald Trump warned of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s “anti-vaxxer talking points” during a speech in the fall. But it seems, in a cruel twist of fate, it is the Trump supporters who are raising the most questions about the vaccines.

Take the headline from InfoWars, “Now That COVID-19 Vaccines Have Been Caught Containing HIV: Watch Alex Jones Predict It Back in February!” published on 12/15/2020. This is actually a follow up to an article published on 12/11/2020 titled “Unexpected side effect? Australia Scraps Covid-19 Vaccine Development After Trials Lead To False Positives For HIV,” which was also published by Russia Today.

Of course, InfoWars has been anti-vaccine for years, even going so far as to say Sesame Street adding an autistic Muppet was “designed to normalize autism, a disorder caused by vaccines,” in 2017. Jones has also warned of the COVID-19 vaccine giving people who take it HIV for the past month, even as recently as the 12/18/2020 edition of his radio show. Donald Trump himself had even expressed skepticism about vaccines both on Twitter and during a Republican Primary Debate while running for President, and not even he can convince Jones to change his mind on a topic he has become a spokesman for.

But surely Trump ally Tucker Carlson would be willing to step out for the vaccine. Well here’s what he said on 12/17/2020:

Even if you are strongly supportive of vaccines, and we are, even if you recognize how many millions of lives have been saved over the past 50 years by vaccine, and we do, it all seems a bit much, it feels false, because it is, it’s too slick.

Carlson argued that the vaccine is likely not-effective, showing various stories of people having negative side effects after getting the vaccine as evidence of this. Once again, this is a Trump ally sowing the biggest doubt about something we’re supposed to give Trump credit for.

And these are only some of the big guys, many Trump supporters show little trust in vaccinations that, once again, we’re supposed to be giving Trump all the credit for. Makes me think personally, specifically about how much of a failure this administration has been.