NYTimes Op-ed warns of a Trump 'vaccine' October Surprise

[Proud Liberal Dem]

38. Several things here:

1. Development of a vaccine/treatment(s) are the basic responsibility of any government confronted with a pandemic. If Trump achieves this by October/November, great, but it's the bare butt minimum that any government would be expected to do. So, if one is developed and proven safe and starting to get administered, great, but it won't be "game over" for COVID-19 quite yet. It will have to be administered to millions of people over a course of several months (possibly with multiple doses), so we would still need to maintain some level of caution until it is available widespread and people are beginning to become inoculated against the virus.
2. Having a vaccine available does NOT wipe out Trump's lack of responsiveness to the pandemic, nor his lack of leadership and, at times, his totally awful leadership during the pandemic.
3. Having a vaccine does not bring back the hundreds of thousands of people whom have died and the thousands that will continue to die every week from it until it is no longer an issue, not to mention all of the people who got the virus and may have developed long-term medical issues due to their exposure to it. Trump and others will likely argue that it could have been worse (hundreds of thousands of dead people is still appalling IMHO and the counter hasn't stopped yet), but there is a counterfactual argument to be made that it could have been better had certain things been in place, faster response time, more restrictions, and, most importantly, competent national leadership.