Any small sliver of hope regarding the COVID-19 Pandemic is something to celebrate these days, and this news may end up being far more than a small sliver of hope. Healthcare workers across the US are receiving vaccinations for the virus on Monday.
“Relieved,” proclaimed Long Island Jewish Medical Center nurse Sandra Lindsay after becoming one of the first to receive the shot. “I feel like healing is coming.”
In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis personally opened a the door for FedEx to sign for a package holding almost 1000 frozen doses of vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech.
At Ohio’s Wexner Medical Center, staff erupted in applause after a countdown of 3-2-1 led to the initial injections.
Around 145 locations across the country received their initial shipment of the vaccine on Monday, with more set to arrive at various medical centers and hospitals in the coming days. High risk health care workers are first in line to receive the vaccine in what will be largest vaccination effort in U.S. history.
“This is 20,000 doses of hope,” John Couris, president of Tampa General Hospital said of their first delivery.
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As current President Donald Trump is seemingly ignoring the pandemic but still wanting credit for a vaccine roll-out, President-Elect Joe Biden has made the ambitious goal of getting 100 million doses of the vaccine delivered and administered within his first 100 days in office.
“I’m absolutely convinced that in 100 days, we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better,” Biden said last week in remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.
The President-Elect has unveiled a comprehensive plan for curbing the coronavirus, including the 100 million doses of the vaccine, enacting a strict mask policy anywhere he can enforce it, and working with public schools to remain open.
Biden’s potential health team includes California Attorney General Xavier Becerra helming the Department of Health and Human Services and Dr. Vivek Murthy, current co-chair of the president-elect’s coronavirus advisory board as U.S. surgeon general.
Rochelle Walensky has already been selected as Biden’s choice to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This would be a big milestone to hit for the Biden administration and one that is sure to rub Trump the wrong way considering he was clearly upset at the initial news of a Covid-19 vaccine likely being available to the public by years’s end with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announcing a dramatic breakthrough mere days after the election.
Trump took aim and hammered away. “Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words, not come out with a vaccine, until just after the election”, Trump said.
Reuters wire service reported that Moderna said its experimental vaccine is 94.5% effective vs. COVID-19, based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial. And Breitbart News told in referring to Pfizer:
[Trump] accused the companies of purposely delaying the vaccine results, noting that they had planned to assess the data as early as October, but postponed it.
As Trump claimed, “they waited and waited and waited, and they thought they’d come out with it a few days after the election, and it would have probably had an impact, who knows, maybe it wouldn’t have. I’m sure they would have found the ballots someplace … the Democrats.”
Then declared that drug companies ran millions of dollars of ads against his campaign because of what he planned to do to reduce drug costs. Trump seems to think numerous outside forces are conspiring against him.
“We had Big Pharma against us, we had the media against us, we had Big Tech against us. We had a lot of dishonesty against us.” Does he make a valid argument?
