NYTimes Op-ed warns of a Trump 'vaccine' October Surprise [View all]

[sinkingfeeling]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/8/1951550/-NYTimes-Op-ed-warns-of-a-Trump-vaccine-October-Surprise

Oct. 23, 2020, 9 a.m., with 10 days before the election, Fox News releases a poll showing President Trump trailing Joe Biden by eight percentage points.

Oct. 23, 2020, 3 p.m., at a hastily convened news conference, President Trump announces that the Food and Drug Administration has just issued an Emergency Use Authorization for a coronavirus vaccine. Mr. Trump declares victory over Covid-19, demands that all businesses reopen immediately and predicts a rapid economic recovery.

Drs. Ezekial J. Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist, and Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician who specializes in immunology and infectious diseases, are the authors of an alarming Op-ed, published in Monday’s New York Times , titled “Could Trump Turn a Vaccine Into a Campaign Stunt?” Dr. Offit is also the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine. Both are professors at the University of Pennsylvania. And both are worried right now.

The authors note that the National Institutes of Health will be conducting trials on at least 10 different potential vaccines during the summer with Astra Zeneca and Pfizer poised to conduct larger-scale administration of their sample vaccines into October. However, that is just the end of the beginning, so to speak, to determine whether such vaccines are actually safe across the population.

As the authors point out, this would provide Trump with an opportunity to declare “victory” over the COVID-19 pandemic, a declaration that would almost certainly be looked favorably on by Wall Street and the financial markets. They theorize that Trump could easily dovetail such a declaration with emphasis on an imminent economic recovery as a consequence. Millions of Americans would thereby be permitted to receive a vaccine that was untested and essentially unproven by the rigorous, “large, prospective, placebo-controlled studies of safety and effectiveness,” that have preceded the distribution and licensing of every vaccine produced in this country (such as the polio vaccine) over the past 70 years.