And, yes, we have to be fair and clearly state that Trump was a complete moron in the way he handled some aspects of this. As an example, I cannot understand why he had such a problem with masks.
I can't even imagine the reasons other than to look at it from my background in manufacturing. This is what I think could have happened: The administration quickly understood we don't even make the cloth necessary to make masks. The US and Europe could not manufacture ANY of the safety equipment we needed for this pandemic at scale back in January of last year. We didn't even make the machines that make the masks.
Telling the public to go get masks would have resulted in a mess and panic. I get that possibility. Here's what they should have done: Figure out how people could DIY some level of protection and widely publish this. Trump should have gone on TV and told people the truth: We can't make enough masks. They are important. This is what you have to do while we sort this out. Instead he engaged in stupid battles with the media. That was dumb, unnecessary, and, yes, it likely cost lives too.
All that said, we are vaccinating at a rate of over a million people per day today because of what the Trump administration set in motion a year ago. They pushed for and succeeded at having multiple vaccines developed in the span of eight months. Something never before done in the history of humanity. And yet he/they were vilified for the stupid shit he did in front of the cameras and, to some extent, rightly so in my opinion.
This was a year in which both our politicians and our news media failed us in monumental ways. Both of these groups lied to us. And the consequences were deadly. I hope historians get this one right.
You might want to look at some of the late 18th century pamphlets and newspapers that were the "press" of which the American founders aimed to protect the freedom -- the American revolutionaries' cause spread partly through pamphlets, so they were very sympathetic to the medium. These publications were not only extremely partisan, but they often abounded in personal insults and rage far beyond anything one would see in a modern newspaper. No, the Founders were very comfortable with sensationalism and extreme polemic.
Say what now? If i'm not mistaken, none of the first vaccines ( Sputnik V, Chinese one, Pfizer/Biontech, AstraZeneca/Oxford) have anything to do with the US. Moderna and J&J are the only ones developed with US funding. So saying that the plethora of vaccines we got was due to the Trump administration is... wrong. Any even remotely sane administration ( which i know isn't a given for the Trump one) would have financed vaccine development, and many did ( UK with Oxford, France with Sanofi and Institut Pasteur ( both failures, Russia with theirs, etc. etc.)
Also not including Moderna in your list of first vaccines is pretty self-serving considering it was approved (fine, EUA'd) one week after Pfizer.
Even the claim that Pfizer wasn't funded by the US is disingenuous; the US placed an order for 100 million doses of it in July for almost $2 billion.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
Indeed, it's not their fault, but it's also wrong to say they have anything to do with it.
> Also not including Moderna in your list of first vaccines is pretty self-serving considering it was approved (fine, EUA'd) one week after Pfizer.
Indeed i fucked up, i wanted to say none of the initial ones bar Moderna, and then say only Moderna and the J&J one were funded by the US, but changed the structure to avoid repetition and it came out wrong.
> Even the claim that Pfizer wasn't funded by the US is disingenuous; the US placed an order for 100 million doses of it in July for almost $2 billion.
Ordering something with payment on delivery doesn't fund its development:
quote from the press release:
> The U.S. government will pay the companies $1.95 billion upon the receipt of the first 100 million doses, following FDA authorization or approval. The U.S. government also can acquire up to an additional 500 million doses.
Two scenarios:
First: "Please develop a vaccine for us. Go quickly. Invest massive amounts of money and resources. We might buy some from you. If someone else comes up with it first, we'll buy from them."
Second: "Here's an irrevocable order for two billion US dollars for a product we need you to develop immediately. Go! Go! Go!".
No business with risk it all under the first scenario. It would be suicidal.
The second scenario. One where you are given guaranteed payment for a result as well as everything else that goes with it (lowering regulatory barriers, fast-track FDA action, help in mass manufacturing and organizing mass distribution, etc.). Yeah, the second scenario is vastly different.
Put it in terms of a startup. Imagine going to a VC and saying "I have this idea but no clue if anyone will buy it", vs. "I have this idea and I have this irrevocable US government order for two billion dollars of my product and all the support I need to make it happen quickly". Which one of the two do you think will get funded in a microsecond?
Yeah. That's the difference.
In any case, the question at hand was whether or not the US admin funded Pfizer, and it did not. It gave them assurances, but so did many other entities ( like the EU), so the US really cannot be hailed as some sort of visionaries that made the vaccines possible with their generous help ( which was what GP was claiming).
Without that pre-order, they had no guarantee that they would get any money. What if their vaccine turned out to be 50% effective? 30%?
You said that the administration should have funded vaccine development. They offered funding and were declined. They also funded J&J and Moderna, and provided purchase guarantees for Pfizer when they weren't allowed to fund it. In other words, the plethora of vaccines that we have is in part thanks to the actions of the administration.
What, specifically, are you suggesting they should have done that they didn't with regard to funding?
Edit: there are innumerable things we can point to that the Trump administration did wrong during the pandemic that made things worse. We don't need to invent new ones that are easily disproved.
The NYT has gone down this path far further than I would have thought possible. The WSJ is now owned by Murdoch so its less surprising that their news reporting has also slipped. Those are the two best. By a margin.
There's a massive problem that isn't being talked about because "Them! They're evil! Just look at what they say about..."
edit: I did something similar stocking up based on the Guardian (yeah, not an ideal source) reporting that a woman from Wuhan crossed the country with no symptoms for Chinese New Year and gave the virus to her whole family. She never had symptoms. I thought at that point, this is on, there's a non-negligible chance this will not be contained, so get prepared.