The Patriot Post® · The COVID Vaccine Battle

One would think that news of two promising COVID vaccine trials would be a bright spot in an otherwise resolutely dismal year — a year that has now seen 250,000 Americans succumb to the coronavirus. But leftists in government and the media are determined to politicize and bureaucratize the China Virus to the greatest degree possible, as recent developments have demonstrated.

Earlier this week, Moderna announced that its COVID vaccine was 94.5% effective in its phase three trial. This followed last week’s good news from Pfizer that its own vaccine trials had produced a 90% effective rate. Pfizer updated its findings Wednesday to say that the final results of its trials produced a 95% effective rate and that the drug maker will seek authorization for use of the vaccine in a matter of days.

To all those “fact-checkers” who derided President Donald Trump’s predictions of a vaccine by year’s end, eat your hearts out.

Multiple vaccines is good news, right? Well, not if you’re New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who told longtime Democrat mouthpiece and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, “The good news is the Pfizer tests look good and we’ll have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is it’s about two months before Joe Biden takes over, and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan.”

Cuomo openly voiced the sour grapes that all leftists feel right now. They are so rabidly against Trump that they would rather see Americans continue to suffer than give him credit for fast-tracking vaccine research. (Plus, Cuomo has books to sell and a salary raise to justify.) New York’s self-appointed emperor also announced that he will file suit against the Trump administration if its vaccine distribution plan doesn’t meet Cuomo’s standards for delivery to “black and brown communities.” This from the governor who forced the state’s elder care facilities to accept infected COVID patients.

Even Pfizer tripped over itself to claim that it reached its vaccine results independently and was not benefitted by Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine-development plan. As much as Pfizer wants to claim otherwise, the pharmaceutical giant did benefit from the Trump administration because the government agreed to purchase 100 million doses of its vaccine at the cost of $2 billion. This was a deal that effectively cleared the path for Pfizer to do its work regardless of whether it developed a product that was inferior to other manufacturers, and that may very well be the case when compared to Moderna, whose vaccine appears to be more easily stored in refrigerators and more effective at combating severe coronavirus infections than what Pfizer has developed.

Operation Warp Speed certainly helped Moderna and Pfizer by clearing away unnecessary bureaucratic roadblocks at the FDA. Roadblocks, by the way, that a President Joe Biden will in all likelihood reinstate, if the makeup of his so-called COVID task force is any indication. Among them is Ezekiel Emanuel, who believes the government should be in the business of deciding who gets care and who doesn’t based on age and their degree of illness. Emanuel also once argued that “by 75, creativity, originality and productivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us.” Biden turns 78 on Friday.

Another task force all-star is David Kessler, whose term as FDA commissioner during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations saw a dramatic drop in approvals for new medical devices after he let trial lawyers swamp the agency.

As if all this weren’t enough, and for the Left it never is, Biden and others are grousing that Trump’s refusal to concede the presidential election is jeopardizing lives. In a call with some of the nation’s business and union leaders, Biden claimed that not having access to the Trump administration’s vaccine plan is hampering the transition. “More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Biden warned. Dr. Anthony Fauci echoed this sentiment, saying, “The virus is not going to stop and call a time-out while things change.”

Despite the good news about the vaccine, the steep surge in new COVID cases has many people worried about a return to lockdown status similar to what we experienced in the spring. Naturally, the nation’s Democrat governors and county executives are only too happy to oblige, issuing draconian and unenforceable Thanksgiving congregating rules. The case could be made that if the first lockdown didn’t work, then why would a second do the trick? But there is also empirical evidence demonstrating that not even a military-enforced quarantine would stop the spread of the virus.

It may not be clear what exactly will stop COVID, but it is certain that politicizing the virus will keep it with us for some time.