In a new Friday statement, former President Donald Trump claimed that he and his administration “came up with” vaccines against COVID-19 “years ahead of schedule” — which, to be clear, is simply not what happened.
In a basic sense, Trump didn’t “come up with” vaccines at all according to any remotely reasonable understanding of the phrase — the work of actually developing the vaccines was completed by companies like Pfizer and Moderna. In addition, there wasn’t a “schedule” for vaccine development. Instead, there was merely a general idea of how long it might take, and two of the major vaccines in use in the U.S. employ relatively recently finalized methods, so of course timetables would shift compared to what was previously known about the vaccine creation process.
The Trump administration did provide financial support for the vaccine development process, but this support seems like a very basic step that could have been undertaken no matter who was in charge, and it certainly doesn’t mean that Trump and his administration “came up with” the vaccines. Trump issued his bizarre claims to the contrary in a rambling statement complaining about the level of credit that his administration has received for major breakthroughs towards emerging from the fog of the pandemic.
‘Isn’t it incredible that because of the vaccines, which I and my Administration came up with years ahead of schedule… that we no longer need masks, and yet our names are not even mentioned in what everybody is calling the modern day miracle of the vaccines? Without the vaccines, this world would have been in for another 1917 Spanish Flu, where up to 100 million people died. Because of the vaccines we pushed and developed in record time, nothing like that will be even close to happening. Just a mention please! The Biden Administration had zero to do with it. All they did was continue our plan of distribution, which was working well right from the beginning.’
He’s consistently not in touch with the basic reality of what’s going on around him. His rambling reveals his ignorance.
