Politics and vaccine

would we lie to you? I mean, twice?

Pfizer “never took a penny from the U.S. government for developing our vaccine”

Health Digest, March 20, 2020

Currently, 11 vaccines are in late-stage trials, including four in the United States, The New York Times said. Operation Warp Speed, a federal effort to rush a vaccine to market, promised Pfizer $1.95 billion to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine for the federal government to distribute to Americans free of charge. However, Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer's senior vice president and the head of vaccine research and development, said that Pfizer has taken no federal money. "We were never part of the Warp Speed," she told The New York Times. "We have always said that science is driving how we conduct ourselves — not politics."

On November 10, 2020, post-election, Pfizer “clarified” that statement to admit that it had been paid $1.9 billion as party of Operation Warp Speed, “but we wudda done it anyway’.

Did Pfizer and the FDA collude to delay the announcement of the FDA’s approval of Pfizer’s vaccine until after the election? You can read a complete debunking of that theory by MSN PRAVDA here. The money quote, so far as I’m concerned, comes at the last paragraph, from one of Trump’s enemies within his own administration:

Some Trump aides said it was probably better for vaccine confidence for the data to be released after the election. 

“Honestly, from my perspective, it’s probably better that we announced anything about the vaccine after the election because it’s going to be more trusted by the American people,” said a senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to discuss the matter. “I’m not sure Pfizer did the wrong thing.”

So clearly, there were discussions on the release of the news post-election, and just as clearly, after those discussions, Pfizer made a decision to stay mum until November 9th.