US Invests Billions in Possible Vaccine 2:03
(CNN) - President Donald Trump is desperately hoping to convert a vaccine against the COVID-19, which the whole world yearns for, in his October surprise (the term refers to an event that influences the presidential election in his favor).
Several times a day the president predicts a vaccine breakthrough, tells Americans that he has the military on standby to develop it, and promises that 100 million, 250 million, even 500 million individual doses will be available very quickly. He expects a "tremendous" vaccine that is "very close" and will be ready "very, very early, before the end of the year, much earlier than planned."
Experts are very hopeful about the potential for an effective vaccine, but by implying that one is near imminent and will quickly end the pandemic, Trump is raising expectations that are unlikely to be met quickly and would come too late to save his campaign. presidential at any time.
But from a short-term political perspective, talking about a vaccine allows Trump - who is bottom in the polls - the opportunity to promise voters an end to the nightmare that has disrupted daily life in much of the country. A big announcement from the South Lake of the White House that a vaccine is finally in reach just days before a close election must be in the president's dreams every night.
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In fact, when asked this Thursday if a vaccine - 29 prototypes of which are currently being developed and tested by various countries, including the United States - would arrive in time for Election Day on November 3, Trump responded like this:
I'm optimistic that it will probably be around then. I think we will have the vaccine before the end of the year certainly, but around that time, yes. I think so, "said the president, accepting that an announcement could boost his reelection offer.
It would not be bad. It wouldn't go wrong. But… I'm doing it, not because of the elections. I love her quickly because I want to save many lives.
His rhetoric about vaccines may also backfire on the ultimate goal of ending the crisis. The president's comments on Thursday prompted a reprimand from former Health Services Director Dr. Vivek Murthy, who said it was "very dangerous" to set artificial deadlines and cautioned against the perception that the process was being rushed.
"We cannot sacrifice our standards because if we do so, it will not only harm people, it will harm people's faith in vaccination efforts," Murthy told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" on Thursday, a time when polls show that nearly half of Americans would not take the vaccine even if it were available.
Suspicions of political interference
Everyone would love to share Trump's optimism. The possibility of many more months of delaying the return to normal life, the huge unemployment caused by the pandemic and another winter that will likely bring more illness and death is regrettable.
But it's hard to take Trump's assessments seriously. Throughout America's fight against the novel coronavirus, it has at times been difficult to tell whether the president is being deliberately misleading or not fully appreciating the details and scale of the challenge ahead.
It is the same with a vaccine. While many medical experts believe that a vaccine could be available early next year for high-risk patients, it could be widely available by the middle of next year that it could. That could mean it could be the fall of 2021 before normal life really begins to return, long after Trump's presidential fate is decided one way or another.
Yet as a political device, talking about a COVID-19 vaccine may seem appealing to a president who has seen nearly 160,000 Americans die in a public health crisis that he has denied, neglected and downplayed.
Talking about an imminent vaccine allows the president to look to the future. When he talks about the vaccine, he is not being questioned about his many failures in the pandemic and the increasing number of deaths to which he often seems indifferent: "It is what it is," he told Axios in a recent interview.
It also allows you to play offense. Any Democrat who points out the many complications of vaccine development and who doubts Trump's optimism can be quickly accused of attacking the very development that could end the crisis for political reasons.
And there seems to be a good story to tell.
By most accounts, Operation Warp Speed , the race for a $ 10 billion government-funded vaccine, is going well and could produce an effective and safe vaccine that could be mass-produced at record speed. If that's the case, Trump deserves his share of the credit for a multi-agency effort in partnership with the private sector. His support for a vaccine stands in contrast to his suspicion of coronavirus testing, which is now declining in 29 states, despite experts saying it must be expanded by many multiples to effectively fight the virus. In Washington, presidential enthusiasm and attention are vital to taking action, and the relative pace of slow testing and tracking efforts compared to the pace of vaccine development will reflect that.
Ethical questions
The Trump administration's record of loosening the rules for political gain and cutting legal corners and the way it chivalrously treated human life in the pandemic, demanding swift economic openings, for example, raises a number of ethical questions about its trustworthiness in the management of the first successful vaccines.
The White House has consistently sidelined scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attempted to present a truthful account of the dire state of the pandemic that contradicts the consistently optimistic and misleading turn preferred by the president and his aides.
On issues like Trump's call for all schools to open in the coming weeks, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has come under heavy pressure from the West Wing. With the next election looming, regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could face similar pressures to bow to the will of the president.
Trump, meanwhile, prescribed hydroxycoloroquine on his White House podium, destroying peer-reviewed studies that say it does not work in favor of disputed analyzes and snippets anecdotal statements in conservative media.
And since the administration has politicized nearly every aspect of the fight against the virus and dumped a daily torrent of lies and misinformation, it will derive little benefit from the vaccine's handling doubt.
There will also be highly sensitive and potentially life-threatening decisions subject to medical ethics and scientific facts that will influence which vulnerable populations and even ethnic groups receive the vaccine first.
Nothing about the president's handling of the worst public health crisis in 100 years suggests that he has considered those questions so far, or that he will want to be guided by moral considerations when it comes to a vaccine.
Fauci's Caution
Fauci, the government's top infectious disease specialist, shares Trump's optimism about the possibility of a vaccine, but has also been tempered in his assessments of its immediate impacts.
"When the vaccine becomes available after a randomized placebo-controlled trial of 30,000 or more people, and it is shown to be safe and effective, I would receive it at any time within the timeframe of people prioritizing it according to ethical principles," Fauci said Thursday on Politico's Pulse Check podcast.
In an interview with Reuters published on YouTube on Wednesday, the expert, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who is often reprimanded by Trump, said that data, not politics, would dictate when a vaccine will be available.
"I'm sure what the White House would like to see, but I haven't seen any hint of pressure at this point," Fauci said.
“As fall approaches, there will be an accumulation of data, and people are going to look at the data… if the data is so bad that you should stop testing, they will tell you to stop. If the data is ... even dangerous, they will say they should stop. If the data still needs to be accumulated, they will say continue testing. If the data looks that good, they can decide on a timeout, and get it approved because it's so good. "
FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn has also said that no political pressure will make his agency cut shortcuts.
“I have said repeatedly that all FDA decisions have been and will continue to be based solely on good science and data. The public can count on that commitment, ”Hahn wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
In an administration where science has been consistently outmatched by politics, those companies will be closely watched in the coming weeks.
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