Since the very beginning of the pandemic, Donald Trump and his team have bungled every aspect of their COVID-19 response and recovery. From ignoring the severity of the virus to abandoning states seeking aid to refusing to wear masks, the White House has abdicated their responsibility in a myriad of ways that range from criminal to downright evil. Still, it was shocking to learn that about their latest failure: pharmaceutical giant Pfizer offered Trump’s administration the opportunity to buy more than 100 million additional doses of the vaccine.
And the White House turned them down.
Dear @realDonaldTrump: Why didn’t your Administration purchase more of the Pfizer vaccine? https://t.co/vKP59r48uj
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 8, 2020
Pfizer already had an order in place for 100 million vaccines as part of a $1.95 billion deal months ago, but offered Trump the opportunity to purchase more as they ramped up production. Pfizer’s vaccine requires two doses, so the 100 million Trump has already ordered will only vaccinate 50 million Americans. Meanwhile, Pfizer and German partner BioNTech have instead finalized a deal with the European Union for over 200 million doses of the over 90 percent effective vaccine.
In response, Trump is issuing an executive order that keeps U.S. vaccines in the U.S. until all Americans have been inoculated. It’s a pointless order that does nothing to stop a potential vaccine shortage as our nation continues to be overrun with the coronavirus. In response to the situation, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said, “We are confident that we will have 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine as agreed to in our contract, and beyond that, we have five other vaccine candidates.” In addition to failing to procure more vaccines, the Trump administration has refused to join Covax, a world health initiative to make the vaccine available across the globe.
Pfizer board member @ScottGottliebMD on the report US declined to purchase additional doses: “$PFE did offer an additional allotment coming out of that plan … multiple times and as recently as after the interim data came out and we knew this vaccine looked to be effective.” pic.twitter.com/VFC4evF8Ay
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) December 8, 2020
Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser of Operation Warp Speed, said that the administration turned downed the opportunity to acquire more vaccines over the summer because they didn’t want to put all their eggs in one basket, telling ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, “Let me remind everybody what our strategy is and has always been, … We selected six different vaccines to build the portfolio, to manage the risk that some may work and some may not work, but also to ensure that as more than one would work that we would accumulate vaccine doses from this portfolio of vaccines.”
Isn’t Trump supposed to be a “dealmaker”? I guess he only deals in incompetence, corruption, and wholesale death. And Americans everywhere will suffer from his malignant incompetence and stupidity. The only upside? There’s only 43 more days of this madness.
(via New York Times, featured image: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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