It's official. There will be no pre-election vaccine
If Donald Trump had his way, the government would be shipping cases of Mountain Dew Baja Blast — with “Acme COVID Vaccine” written on them — to clinics across the country within the next two weeks.
Because he doesn’t have the patience or intelligence to formulate a coherent COVID-19 strategy, Trump has, from the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, been grasping at all sorts of quack cures — everything from hydroxychloroquine to UV butt lamps. But the brass ring has always been a vaccine.
Since the pandemic started, Trump has irresponsibly — and stupidly — promised that a vaccine was just around the corner. In fact, earlier this month, while he was still molting his clammy COVID cocoon, he promised that vaccines were coming “momentarily.”
Well, in case you hadn’t already guessed, Trump was writing checks his prodigious ass simply can’t cash.
There won’t be a coronavirus vaccine ready before Election Day, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated promises and vaccine makers’ breakneck speed.
The president’s last best hope for meeting that deadline fizzled Friday as Pfizer announced that it would not seek emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration before the third week of November. The company is the only frontrunner in the vaccine race that has said it could have proof its vaccine works by Nov. 3.
Whoops.
Say, maybe overpromising on a COVID cure isn’t such a good idea after all. Kind of — I don’t know — encourages people to take this health crisis a little less seriously than they should.
For Trump, the failure to meet that deadline is a self-inflicted defeat. The Election Day target was always an artificial one, created by a president who for months has touted it on the campaign trail and press briefing stage. When his administration’s top scientists disputed the timeline, Trump accused them of slowing down progress for political reasons.
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“It was never going to happen. It was utterly unrealistic,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “Vaccines follow a timeline of good science, they don’t follow a timeline of electoral politics.”
Sadly, Donald Trump somehow thinks he can light a fire under the scientific community by berating them in ALL CAPS SCREEDS on Twitter. Science doesn’t really work that way. Nor does government, come to think of it.
Fortunately for Trump, his cult followers are used to hearing — and promptly forgetting — his empty promises.
The rest of us? We have longer memories.
Say, how about we give Joe a boost? I won’t be completely happy unless Trump sheds viscous tears of chicken grease and nougat on Election Night. We need to repudiate the ocher ogre in no uncertain terms.
Let’s do this.
This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry.” — Bette Midler on Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, via Twitter. Find out what made dear Bette break up. Dear Fcking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump and its boffo sequels Dear Prsident A**clown: 101 More Rude Letters to Donald Trump and Dear F*cking Moron: 101 More Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing are now available for a song! Click those links, yo!
