CNN, which spent the last four years ripping every action (or perceived inaction) of former President Donald Trump, on Thursday posted a breathless story with a dire headline.
“Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start ‘from scratch,’ sources say,” blared the headline.
“Newly sworn in President Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN, posing a significant challenge for the new White House,” said the lede. “The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.”
CNN cited (once again) an anonymous source who said: “There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch.”
The liberal network also noted that Biden “has made clear that slowing down the spread of Covid-19 and getting 100 million vaccine shots into Americans’ arms in his first 100 days in office are of utmost priority—goals that will shape whether Biden’s first years in office are ultimately deemed successful.”
Well, that won’t be the Herculean task some have made it out to be, as one new report says the U.S. is already vaccinated more than 900,000 Americans a day.
“Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 17.2 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 912,497 doses per day were administered,” Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
That means under Trump, vaccinations were already 91.2% on their way to 1 million a day. Biden will just need to pump that up by a tiny 8.8%, just 87,503 people, to reach his goal.
Bloomberg also gave Trump some credit for creating Operation Warp Speed to quickly develop a vaccine for the virus. “Coronavirus vaccines are coming to market at a record pace, shaving years off the typical development time. That speed has been financed in part by rich countries like the U.S., whose Operation Warp Speed program helped subsidize development and manufacturing of half a dozen novel vaccines.”
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, the first in the U.S., was approved by the FDA for emergency use authorization (EUA) on Dec. 11. The FDA on Dec. 18 also approved Moderna’s EUA request. Both are already being distributed. Moderna said its data showed their vaccine was 95% effective in its late-stage clinical trial, the same as Pfizer’s.
The Moderna vaccine was developed in conjunction with the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. A key advantage of Moderna’s vaccine is that it does not need sub-zero storage like Pfizer’s, which needs to be stored at -94 degrees.
A third vaccine, one developed by AstraZeneca and researchers at Oxford University, was approved Dec. 30 for emergency use in Britain.