Vaccine announcement was delayed to scupper Trump’s second term

[Dongdingdong]

This is what Donald Trump is claiming. And I have to say, I’m no fan of Trump but the timing does seem very convenient. AIBU to think his suspicions may have some grounds?

@Dongdingdong

If it was up to me I'd have delayed it, its not like he's helped during the pandemic is it?

So you think it’s acceptable for pharmaceutical companies to play politics?

The pharmacos have been playing politics for decades . All you need to do is read up a little about the political traction of groups like Purdue/Johnson & Johnson /GlaxoSmithKline and many more. Don't be naive, OP .

Of course it isn't acceptable but it's nothing new.

Trump has lied and sleazed his way through the entire pandemic disaster and been instrumental in causing the biggest death toll anywhere on the planet. Because of him a large proportion of US citizens actually believe this Q'Anon / Infowars bollocks. He's an absolute cunt in this regard and too many others to mention

The pharmaceutical companies knew that Trump would use their success in rallies leading up the election to talk about himself and how his greatness had contributed to this.

Despite being a scientific success, Trump would have used it to promote himself. And his voters would have bought into it.

A pandemic should not be used to gain political points. Still, Trump has done nothing but, despite his obvious failure to deal with it (and denial of it).

It was right to not use the vaccine trial results as a political tool.

Trump supporters dont care about the virus and they hate "big pharma" so why would they care there's a vaccine? Most of them wouldnt use it anyway.

I heard the Turkish/German CEO of BioNtech being interviewed on R4. He was clear that they were eager to release the results the very moment they had them. Why wouldn't they be?

I believe him. I don't think DT could lie straight in bed. I don't believe a word he says unless he backs it with evidence.

Can you imagine those amazing results coming in after all that work and a German company saying, "Hmm, let's sit on this until after an election in a foreign country." I can't.

As most of his supporters dont believe covid exists, refuse to wear masks because Trump won't, a vaccine is irrelevant to them, they're not having it anyway. Doubtful it affected anything
Don Jr. says similar.... Pfizer strongly denies this as they work at the speed of science and nothing else.
Sore losers
Fake news !!

Trump holding up the transition means he will be responsible for thousands more deaths so the fact he be gone in January is the best news ever. It can't come soon enough, the grown ups are on their way

@Porcupineinwaiting

Trump supporters dont care about the virus and they hate "big pharma" so why would they care there's a vaccine? Most of them wouldnt use it anyway.

Winning elections is about appealing to the swing voters, not the hardline passionate supporters who already agree with him on everything including the really bonkers stuff.

Which is why I remain sceptical of Boris’s assertion that we’ll all be back to normal by Easter

Hells yeah

A friend said that to me on Monday, i was like 😳

It would be lovely and fingers crossed and all that, but ‘boris said...’?

But hey, let's have the USA re-run their entire presidential election just in case, and see if the result comes out any different. Why not? It's got more entertainment value than a third vote count in Georgia. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Hey @Dongdingdong

Have all these sensible counterpoints changed your mind then? Or are you clinging to your initial assertion despite the evidence?

I cannot wait for him and his crazy fanboys and girls to fuck off. Sick of hearing conspiracy theories and crazy, uneducated, dumb shit. They are always so proud and keen to display their stupidity.

He's been saying that for the last 6 months

That's what I came in here to say. He was bound to be right sooner or later.

OP - will you be having the vaccine when it's out?

Judging by the tone of the post I think the OP has already followed Trumps advice and injected herself with bleach. No need for this new bigly fake vaccine that controls elections

If they had announced it before, it would have been seen as political too. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Personally I am glad to see the orange horror leaving the White House.

I do smile at a PP saying Trumpy was right about a vaccine. He started talking about vaccines being ready in record time in March. And frequently thereafter.

Definitely!

maybe because it’s pretty damn worrying to have big pharma companies playing politics

Pharma have been playing politics in the US for years. But in that respect they're pro Republican as they want to keep drug prices high to keep their profits high. You're naive not to know this.

FFS the man is an arse! Who really gives a flying fuck what he thinks or says ?!!

I can't express my opinion or feelings better than that.

So basically OP you are saying that Biden voters would have changed their vote to Trump had they known that a vaccine was “imminent”. If you could explain your reasoning that would be great.

Still waiting OP.

How can anyone believe a single word Trump utters.

This is fake news about a fake vaccine to combat a fake Chinese virus, after all.

Stop defending a twat who constantly talks our of his arse.

Do you really think any of those pharma companies or instructions would delay announcing that they are the FIRST to come up with a safe and effective vaccine?? Absolutely not! Trump is a self-centred, deluded, compulsive liar.

It wasn't 'his' second term. He never had a second term due to him.

He has only caused and contributed to thousands of deaths with his absolute ignorance and hideous stupidity re:covid

The only terms due to him are the upcoming prison ones. Disgusting, vile man

Dongdingdong
Trump was also scoffed at last month for claiming that a vaccine would be ready “within weeks”.
...
Turns out he was right!

Not really; it won't be, because there are rather more things involved in a vaccine being ready than just "yippee, this vaccine probably works".

(If you want to look at it another way, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been ready since early June, the Moderna one since later the same month, and the AstraZeneca one had been ready in its present form since late January. The thing that has held them up is that they had to be tested on a large sample of people to make sure they did no harm and were effective. So define "ready"? There are at least seventeen other vaccines which are ready in that they are now in a finalised form; they are not tested yet, but they are ready.)

Then there are details to be arranged like actual manufacture in sufficient quantity, provision of refrigeration, needles, syringes and PPE, distribution, enough people qualified to administer it...

This is particularly the case with the Pfizer vaccine, which requires being stored at -80°C; not easily achieved even in the USA, and pretty likely to be impossible in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Furthermore, a vaccine is no good against an epidemic unless enough people are treated with it so maybe we ought to start by convincing Trump's cult in America that a] SARS CoV 2 exists at all and that it kills people (which he has denied for most of its duration, and which many of them are denying even while they are dying of it literally on their death-beds in hospitals, they are saying it must be lung-cancer while their relations say the doctors are letting them die out of malice) and b] the vaccine (any vaccine) is not a plot by Bill Gates to inject everyone with trackers for some reason they can't explain but which is obviously Evil the same way trying to eradicate malaria is evil.

Trump is a very low-quality thinker, and so long as by "in weeks" he meant "within a year or so" he was right by a very limited definition of right. But my bet is that if he was, it was an accident, said by him for political reasons and not because he knew a damn thing about what he was talking about any more than he knows a damn thing about anything he talks about.