https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/11/trump-angry-about-pfizer-vaccine/Gee I wonder why Trump didn't roll out any vaccines.
Trump rails against ‘medical deep state’ after Pfizer vaccine news comes after Election Day
But company insists the election didn’t affect timing of the promising data.
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has come under fire from President Trump and others in the administration after Pfizer released promising results about its experimental coronavirus vaccine after the election. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)By
Laurie McGinley
,
Josh Dawsey
,
Yasmeen Abutaleb
and
Carolyn Y. Johnson
November 11, 2020 at 5:08 p.m. MST
3389
President Trump is lashing out at the Food and Drug Administration following a disclosure Monday that an experimental coronavirus vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is more than 90 percent effective, convinced the timing — six days after Election Day — proves the “medical deep state” deliberately tried to sabotage his electoral prospects by delaying the results.
Shortly after Trump heard the news Monday, he demanded Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar “get to the bottom” of what happened with Pfizer, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the president’s actions.
A few hours later, the issue was front and center at a meeting of the White House coronavirus task force when FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn briefed members about the vaccine data.
The meeting agenda that day had been drafted so Hahn could walk members through the vaccine approval process, a senior administration official said. Hahn said the timing was the sole result of independent decisions made by Pfizer on collecting and reviewing the information, according to three senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal affairs.
Azar, Hahn’s boss, pointedly contradicted Hahn in front of Vice President Pence, asserting that the FDA’s actions had in fact contributed to a delay in Pfizer’s announcement. He also asked questions that some officials thought suggested Azar believed Pfizer’s timing was affected by political motivations.
Based on its initial data, pharmaceutical company Pfizer said Nov. 9 that its experimental vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing covid-19. (Reuters)
Trump weighed in Monday night, tweeting without evidence that the FDA and Pfizer intentionally withheld the news until after the election.
“As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn’t have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!” Trump wrote. “The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later — As I’ve said all along!”
Trump’s anger at the FDA raises fresh questions about whether Hahn will hang on to his job until Jan. 20 — when Trump leaves office — in an administration intent on purging officials deemed insufficiently loyal. Trump called Hahn shortly before he tweeted Monday and was “screaming at him” about the Pfizer announcement, in the words of one senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters. The accusations against the FDA may further fuel baseless conspiracy theories that the election was stolen from Trump.
The FDA and HHS declined to comment.
Although there is no evidence that Pfizer withheld data or did not report it as soon as it was available, a White House official said without evidence that Pfizer “either knew the data and sat on it, or intentionally did not review it as originally planned, in order to push it beyond the election for political purposes.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
But Pfizer did not have access to the data until the Sunday after the election and could not have known the results before then. Neither the trial participants nor the company knew who was getting the vaccine, and the company did not know how many cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, there were on Election Day. An independent monitoring committee analyzed the data Sunday and informed Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla, who learned of the results at 2 p.m. that day. The company announced the news the next morning.
An examination of decisions made by Pfizer and the FDA in recent months shows that while their actions inevitably affected the timing of the clinical trial results, there is no proof decisions were made with the intent of imperiling Trump’s reelection prospects.
Laboratories of the German biotech firm BioNTech have been involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine. (BioNTech/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) (Biontech Se/Handout/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Rather, the drug company and regulatory agency were reacting to an unprecedented and evolving situation with the goal of dramatically compressing the timeline for vaccine development — it routinely stretches for years — into 10 months without sacrificing safety, according to numerous individuals who were involved in the process or had knowledge of it.
They were also responding to public pressure from scientists who repeatedly voiced concerns that Trump would try to force a vaccine decision before Election Day. On several occasions, Trump said he hoped a vaccine would be ready before Nov. 3. Several Trump administration officials said they were frustrated that some of the scientists expressing concerns included experts advising Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
“What’s going on is they are trying to say there was collusion between FDA and Pfizer to delay this analysis of the trial data so that it wouldn’t benefit Trump in the election, and there’s no basis to that,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak about the issue.
Bourla said Election Day did not factor into the company’s decisions.
So why was Trump so angry that Pfizer only announced its results after election day? Trump wanted vaccines or not? Or just for the votes?
