How Not to Sell a Vaccine
Update, Dec. 14. Back from my weekend blackout, on Friday, the Chief of Staff told the CDC head Hahn that if they did not approve the vaccine on that day, that he would be fired. Not a great confidence builder. They okayed the vaccine late Friday. It started distribution on Sunday and shots were given Monday. Meanwhile, it appears that Trump delayed the White House being first in line for the vaccinations, as had been secretly planned. I was going to make a joke that they would be first in line, but they beat me to it. Unfortunately, Covid-19 deaths passed 300,000 today. Oh, and the Electoral College elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris President and VP. Also, AG Barr resigned today.
Update, Dec. 10. Trump managed to get 106 GOP House members to sign onto the amicus brief of the Texas lawsuit described below. Trump claims that 78% of the people do not believe that Biden won, but that number only applies to Republicans. Only 33% of the public thinks that is so. The FDA advisory panel approved of the Pfizer vaccine. UC Irvine is migrating their blogs to CampusPress, which covers 1,500 Universities. The URL of the site will remain the same, but I won’t be able to update it until Monday, Dec. 14. What else could go wrong by then?
Spectacular news get viewers, not ho-hum, things are fine. The abusers of this by the main-stream media do not sell the vaccine. Even the backing of the vaccine by Trump is fogged by his super-ego and dishonest persona now. Why would you take a vaccine from a nut who claims he was re-elected President, when he clearly wasn’t? He has been berated in over 55 useless court cases, and flatly turned down by the Supreme Court. He also dishonored the vaccine companies, claiming that they delayed the vaccine results until after his election, while they were just following the highest standards in verifying that the vaccines were safe.
Let’s just take CNN. They and the administration are making the biggest deal about how many hours will elapse between the validation of the vaccine by the approval committee, and the putting the vaccines “into the arms”. Michigan said that they are hoping to inoculate 70% of their state by the end of 2021, so don’t hold your breath. At the same time, a big deal is being made that the United Kingdom came out with the Pfizer vaccine a week earlier than we did. The news is overlooking that the UK lets vaccine companies determine by themselves when their vaccines deserve approval.
Back to the White House. Trump has kept President Elect Joe Biden from cooperation with the future distribution of the vaccine, so that Trump gets full (?) credit for the Warp Speed Program. Turns out, that Pfizer developed their vaccine without Warp Speed Funds. Also, last summer they offered Trump 500 million doses, enough for 250 million Americans, but Trump preferred to spread the money around, perhaps to companies which used Warp Speed money for their development.
Trump’s personal disregard for fighting the Coronavirus is BLATANT. 43 principals in his White House and family have now been infected with Covid-19. The latest are Trump’s election challenging lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. The greatest event of celebrating his third conservative Supreme Court Justice appointment turned out to probably be a superspreader event. Trump’s rally for the Senate runoffs in Georgia, had unmasked and crowded fans. Trump is holding 23 Christmas events at the White House, so far mostly unmasked and without social distancing. Since they are probably hosting his best donors, they are also violations of the Hatch act, by all involved. To top that off, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just held a State Department event without masking or social distancing, and plans more.
While we thought that the Supreme Court had rejected the Trump assault, there is now a Texas case filed by it’s AG against four battleground states, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, to which 17 AGs from Republican states have also file amicus briefs. It’s like the secessions before the Confederacy was formed, and the Civil War to reunite the States. There were only 11 states seceding then. There really is a parallel universe, but a Civiqs.com Daily Kos poll shows that only 33% do not accept the outcome of the election.
Back to CNN. They interviewed a Drama Queen who was in the US test and got the Pfizer vaccine. She overdramatized the known day-after effects, although she was fine afterwards. That could not have been more effective to turn people off, or to make them not return for their necessary second doses. There were 15,000 other inoculated who could have described much less reaction, but that would have been ho-hum.
Every vaccine that I have every taken has a form warning you not to take it if you are allergic to anything used in its preparation, and you have to sign off on it. So CNN is now making a big deal that two of the first takers had allergies. That is okay, to warn people to take the warnings seriously, but still designed for flash, and discouraging people to take the vaccine.
This morning’s story was that around half of NY City firemen were not going to take the vaccine. Later in the story, we learned that about 1/3 had already been infected, and they were just starting a program to inform them about the vaccine.
Gov. Inslee of Washington just now, and in the last few days Dr. Fauci, have been warning people not to relax their safety protocols, just because a few have started getting the vaccine. Dr. Fauci, also has stressed that even those vaccinated if attacked by Covid-19, might still be able to pass on the virus, so we still had to have masking and social distracting.
I still recall Richard Nixon, and the ad: Would you buy a used car from this man? Trump is proving far less trustworthy.
Why let the Congress off the hook? Some Republican brought an anti-everything doctor to testify before a House committee. He dissed the vaccine, masks, and who even had time to follow what else. Oh yes, the Congress has not yet passed a bill to provide funds to distribute the vaccines.
