Remember when the Pfizer vaccine was released shortly after Biden got into office and Trump shouted that it was his work that made it happen?
Democrats slammed and mocked Trump but according to a pretty thorough nonbias, journolist3Trump wasn’t wrong. On top of that, the journalists say that Democrats intentionally delayed the vaccine to make Trump look bad.
Nate Silver claimed “liberal public health elites” pressured Pfizer to delay fast-track approval of its COVID-19 vaccine until after the 2020 presidential election.
Essentially denying Trump his win and potentially swaying voters. Just like how they pushed doubt about the vaccines while Trump was in office but pushed them the DAY Biden got in.
The number-crunching data journalist reacted to an article by Politico that cited a House report that claimed the Trump administration sought to expedite approvals for both vaccines and “unproven treatments” for COVID-19.
“‘Trump pushed for vaccine approvals too fast’ is the worst possible critique of the Trump administration’s COVID policy,” Silver, founder of the Disney-owned FiveThirtyEight political news and analysis website, tweeted.
“That probably saved a lot of lives. If anything approval should have been faster.”
In a subsequent tweet, Silver wrote that “liberal public health elites” pushed Pfizer to “change its original protocols” that govern its authorization of vaccines so that the decision would be put off until after Election Day two years ago.
Silver noted that Pfizer’s decision “had the convenient side-effect of delaying any vaccine announcement until after the election” and that the story “deserves more scrutiny.”
Also, the late 2020 push from liberal public health elites that persuaded Pfizer to *change* its original protocols – and had the convenient side-effect of delaying any vaccine announcement until after the election – deserves more scrutiny.https://t.co/1v3ueTNqur
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 24, 2022
Silver was hit with plenty of criticism with some saying he went ‘full MAGA’. One liberal journalist, Josh Marshall asked, “You really think “liberal public health elites” in their efforts, right or wrong, to make sure vaccine approval were properly scrutinized were in fact trying to find a backdoor way to get approvals pushed out past election day because those are the terms they think in?”
“I don’t know for sure but yes the implication is that it may have been politically motivated in whole or in part. Especially given the people making the push, who tend to be strong D partisans. It’s a story that deserves more reporting and I’ve done some poking around myself,” he added in a follow-up.
I don't know for sure but yes the implication is that it may have been politically motivated in whole or in part. Especially given the people making the push, who tend to be strong D partisans. It's a story that deserves more reporting and I've done some poking around myself.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 24, 2022
The vaccines do not prevent infection but they’ve done pretty well at preventing death so keeping that in mind, I wonder how many people caught COVID during that time frame and died, needlessly?
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.