Team Biden’s COVID-Vaccine Deceptions
Can somebody tell President Biden that the election is over? Since he was sworn in six weeks ago, he hasn’t stopped denigrating the Trump administration’s COVID-19-vaccination program. His statements are unbecoming, counterproductive, and, worst of all, mostly false.
Immediately after January’s inauguration, Biden’s team claimed that Trump had left it no vaccine plan, that Biden would have to “build everything from scratch” and start “from square one.” Dr. Anthony Fauci disputed these claims, and for good reason: In fact, the Trump administration left Biden with two approved vaccines and 17 million doses already administered, the fifth-best vaccination rate in the world on a per capita basis and the second-best among large countries.
On February 11, Biden complained that the U.S. vaccine program was “in much worse shape” than he’d expected and that his team had been misled. The remarks prompted Brett Morgenstern, a former White House official involved in the Trump team’s coronavirus response, to respond that the outgoing administration had laid out vaccination plans for the incoming administration well in advance. “That is why the new Administration’s goals were being surpassed before they even came into office,” Morgenstern said. “Enough with the lies, excuses & political pot shots. Time to lead.” (Biden officials had repeatedly claimed they would improve the vaccination rate to a million a day, despite clear evidence that that goal was already being met by inauguration day.)
A week later, at a Pfizer manufacturing plant, Biden asserted, “My predecessor — as my mother would say, ‘God love him’ — failed to order enough vaccines, failed to mobilize the effort to administer the shots, failed to set up vaccine centers. That changed the moment we took office.” And on March 2 Biden claimed, “When we came into office, the prior administration had contracted for not nearly enough vaccine to cover adults in America. We rectified that.”
In fact, the Trump administration had contracted last August for 300 million doses — 100 million from each company — with the three companies (Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson) that now have FDA-approved vaccines. The administration contracted for another 100 million doses each of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in December, meaning that it had contracted for 500 million doses of approved vaccine before Biden assumed office. That is more than enough to vaccinate the 209 million American adults Biden referred to. And while the Biden administration did recently arrange for 200 million more doses — 100 million each from Pfizer and Moderna — those doses will not be available until the end of July.
Read the full article at National Review.