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0 pointspavlov1y ago0 comments

Haven’t heard this conspiracy theory before.

So which is it: 1) The mRNA vaccine was rushed out without sufficient clinical trials; 2) The results from the clinical trials were delayed to hurt Trump.

You can’t have both you know. So far the far-right argument has been entirely based on scenario 1, but it’s certainly interesting to know that scenario 2 also exists for some people.

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philwelch1y ago

Here’s reporting from MIT Technology Review, a bastion of far-right conspiracy theories: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/19/1010646/campaign...

Operation Warp Speed was a signature effort of the Trump administration. As a result, the claim that the vaccine was being “rushed out without sufficient clinical trials” was made by just about all of Trump’s critics.

pavlovOP1y ago

Nine months from formulating the vaccine to a successful Phase 3 trial is record speed. There’s no way the vaccine was held up to somehow politically hurt the president.

I’m a Trump critic and I was happy with the priority given to Operation Warp Speed. It’s the only thing he did right during the pandemic. But a lot of the MAGA crowd are anti-vaxxers, so he’s been trying to distance himself from the successful vaccine operation.

johnnyanmac1y ago

>But a lot of the MAGA crowd are anti-vaxxers, so he’s been trying to distance himself from the successful vaccine operation.

Exactly. Trump himself killed his own stance and delayed initatives that cost thousands of lives. Probably killed off a lot of his voter base to boot. if he managed to convince people to lockdown he may have still be president in 2020-2024.

philwelch1y ago

The clinical trials were all done well before the election, and the FDA could have issued the emergency use authorizations in October, but they held off for a few weeks under the explicit political pressure discussed in the story I mentioned.

When it comes to “anti-vaxxers”, a lot of people, including both Biden and Harris, were outspokenly skeptical of any vaccine that would have been approved under a Trump administration (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/05/kamala-harris-trump...), so frankly this is largely an artifact of political polarization.

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philwelch1y ago

Here’s reporting from MIT Technology Review, a bastion of far-right conspiracy theories: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/19/1010646/campaign...

pavlovOP1y ago

Nine months from formulating the vaccine to a successful Phase 3 trial is record speed. There’s no way the vaccine was held up to somehow politically hurt the president.

johnnyanmac1y ago

>But a lot of the MAGA crowd are anti-vaxxers, so he’s been trying to distance himself from the successful vaccine operation.

philwelch1y ago

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