Certainly, it is true. I have said before that it is his greatest success as president, although if you want to defend Abraham’s agreements I will listen to you. Anyway, I don’t think Durbin is just a good man when it comes to giving some credit to the Trump team. There is a strategy behind it, which we can see duplicating other Democrats in the coming weeks and months. Look, and then read.
Biden has a problem. He wants to vaccinate as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. The success of the Pfizer vaccine and the media coverage surrounding it has made it easier if you believe the polls, but he and his advisers know convincing grassroots Republicans will be a strong uprising once Trump is out of office. and stop being politically benefiting from the adoption of the vaccine. Anti-vax messages are already replacing the “stop the theft” messages in some populist media. It remains to be seen whether Republicans in Congress will adopt a blind rejection of Biden, but there is no doubt that they will make pieces of the Republican Party base. How can you convince these people to get vaccinated?
Ideally, you should hire Trump himself as your salesperson.
The problem is that Trump will not lend a hand for altruistic reasons of “being a good citizen.” No doubt he is eager to see how Biden fails as president in everything he does, wanting to highlight every hiccup in vaccine distribution after Jan. 20 on his social media. I would say the odds are no worse than 50/50 for him to become an anti-vaxxer unfortunately, ending up taking advantage of some conspiracy theory yet to unfold about how the vaccine was secretly “changed” after Biden took office and the the new version is dangerous. The fact that Republican voters want to be given the right credit for their success in distributing the vaccine so quickly is not a logical barrier for many of them to end up – or already – go on to oppose the vaccine.
If you want me to help sell the vaccine, there will have to be something. His vanity must be appealed to. Marc Thiessen understands:
Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of modern medicine. As my colleague from the American Business Institute, former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb, told me, “We have never done this level of development work in such a short period of time with so many successes. This is a singular success. I can’t think of any historical representative. “
Biden has criticized the pandemic response failures of the Trump pandemic, so why not give credit to the president for this adulterated success? Because that would mean acknowledging that, for all of Trump’s flaws in the management of the pandemic, he is also responsible for ending it. And Biden saves that credit.
Perhaps, given Trump’s terrible behavior, Biden has no mood to praise the president. But it’s not about Trump; it’s about Biden fulfilling his promise to reach out to his opponent’s supporters and rally the Americans. If he really wants to unite the country, he should give credit where credit is due and he will commit to continuing Operation Warp Speed.
Nothing will “bring Americans together,” but giving Trump a publicly reputable stake in the continued adoption and success of the vaccine would be a cunning way to curb part of the politically driven opposition, including the Trump himself. “There is a whole section of the population that listens to the president very carefully and therefore plays an important role,” Warp Speed Operation Chief Moncef Slaoui told CNN a few days ago. Biden’s team would have considered reaching out to Sean Hannity and Rand Paul to try to make vaccines instead of asking Trump, but no contact has yet been made. Trump aides told Politico that Biden “the president-elect intentionally ignores the achievements of Trump’s vaccine and only plays partisan politics. Biden, they said, should praise Trump for pushing what they have christened as “Trump’s vaccine” in record time. “
That’s where Durbin comes in. Perhaps the task of praising the president for his vaccination work has been outsourced by Biden to Senate Democrats. Leftists will not want to see the president-elect greet Trump for anything to do with COVID, especially with things like this that continue to come out in the media. But it’s so strange for a congressional Democrat to celebrate a Trump success that having Durbin and others talk about the startling success of Operation Warp Speed could make an impression on him. With any other former president, including those who lost the election to his successor (e.g., Bush 41), it would be easy to pick up the phone and politely ask for his help in an effort that will benefit Americans. With Trump, there is more psychological work involved. How do you get him to participate in the vaccine concentration? Answer: Do it on him as much as you can.
Speaking of hiccups in the distribution of the vaccine, it is worth noting this “hiccups”, but not (yet) freaking out:
The first worker, a middle-aged woman who he had no history of allergies, had an anaphylactic reaction that began Tuesday 10 minutes after he received the vaccine at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau, a hospital official said. He experienced a rash on his face and torso, shortness of breath and a high heart rate.
Dr. Lindy Jones, medical director of the hospital’s emergency department, said the worker was first given a shot of epinephrine, a standard treatment for severe allergic reactions. Her symptoms diminished, but she reappeared, and was treated with steroids and a drip of epinephrine.
When doctors tried to stop the dripping, his symptoms reappeared, so the woman was taken to the intensive care unit, observed throughout the night, and then weaned from dripping early Wednesday, Dr. Jones said.
She ended up going to the hospital last night as a precaution. Another worker at the same Alaska hospital also had a reaction that was treated with epinephrine, but recovered within an hour. These are the only cases I have heard of so far this week in which semi-severe reactions to the vaccine developed. They may be pure exits, one in 100,000 events or whatever, but the fact that two people in the same hospital had adverse responses that needed medical treatment makes the “fortune” theory harder to swallow. I wonder: Could there be something environmental in or around the hospital, possibly related to the specific work they were doing, that would have made them susceptible to the side effects of the vaccine?
I guess conspiracy theories are already circulating on Facebook claiming that reactions like this are happening all over the country and that they are being covered up, but that doesn’t become obvious with the extensive trials Pfizer did. “Historically with a vaccine, the terrible (serious adverse events) that always concern us occur in a matter of weeks,” an emergency physician told USA Today. “We’re not seeing that kind of spike … in the weeks we see people taking the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.” By the way, vaccinations in nursing homes have already begun, as several thousand West Virginians have been shot and more than 20,000 Floridians are set to be received this week. So far there are no reports of serious adverse reactions in the most vulnerable citizens of the United States.