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Trump To Sign Coronavirus Vaccine Executive Order That Will Put Pressure On Biden

   DailyWire.com
US President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to wrestler Dan Gable in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on December 7, 2020.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump is reportedly expected to sign an executive order this week on distributing coronavirus vaccines that will put pressure on Democrat Joe Biden because it counters a proposal created by one of Biden’s top coronavirus advisers.

The executive order ensures that all Americans have access to the vaccines before the U.S. government starts shipping the vaccine to other nations.

“The priority is to make sure we distribute these vaccines to Americans before we start shipping them around the world to get international access,” an official told Fox News. The official said that the U.S. would most likely not start shipping vaccines to other nations until at least “late spring” and that would only occur after Americans who want to be vaccinated receive the vaccine.

“The news of the executive order comes just days ahead of the Food and Drug Administration’s Thursday meeting regarding Pfizer and BioNTech’s application for emergency authorization of their coronavirus vaccine, three weeks after the companies filed for it,” Fox News reported. “The FDA also plans to meet on Dec. 17 to discuss Moderna’s vaccine.”

The executive order comes in contrast to what Biden coronavirus adviser Dr. Zeke Emanuel has proposed doing which is to give the vaccine to other nations before all Americans have an opportunity to receive it.

“Emanuel, who served as a key architect of the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration, co-authored a paper in September in which he encouraged officials to follow the ‘Fair Priority Model,’ which calls for a ‘fair international distribution of vaccine,’ rather than what he and his co-authors characterized as ‘vaccine nationalism,’” Fox News reported in November. “The model allows the country that produces the vaccine to hold onto enough of a supply to keep the transmission rate below 1%, but says that beyond that, the vaccine should be distributed internationally. That means giving away or selling doses of the vaccine before it’s available to every citizen in that country, Emanuel explained to Scientific American.”

In the interview with Scientific American, Emanuel said that “from an ethical standpoint, there’s not a good reason for absolute partiality, where a country covers every one of its citizens before giving any vaccine internationally.” He went as far as to say that there is a “good ethical reason” for not having “absolute vaccine nationalism.”

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley noted the political impact that the move by the Trump administration will have on Biden, writing: “Lame duck executive orders can set up a successor to force him to openly adopt controversial positions. Today’s vaccine order could have that effect.”

“Biden would need to rescind the executive order, which would present serious political issues. The issue could also play badly for Democrats in the Georgia races. Like the special counsel appointment, this could prove positively Machiavellian,” Turley continued. “The order could also raise some interesting legal issues as these companies take foreign orders. There are transnational companies with cooperative agreements. This could present conflicts if the U.S demands not just an ‘America First’ position in distribution but production.”

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