Media Cheer Historic Vaccine after Months of Skeptical Coverage

Mainstream journalists celebrated news of the country’s first COVID-19 vaccinations on Monday after claiming for months that the Trump administration’s push to deliver a vaccine in record time was ill-advised and unrealistic.

CNBC reported Monday morning that the vaccine’s development “shattered every record in modern medical history,” considering that Pfizer and BioNTech began their vaccine partnership on March 17 of this year. But in October, CNBC clipped a segment of the final presidential debate — in which President Trump stated that the vaccine is “going to be announced within weeks, and it’s going to be delivered” — with the headline “President Trump says Covid-19 vaccine will be coming by the end of the year, despite contrary evidence.”

The “evidence” cited amounted to quotes from a group of health officials and “experts” relied upon by a number of outlets to pour cold water on optimistic vaccine predictions.

“I think there were a lot of people who tried to put the brakes on a vaccine discussion, because they were worried that it would be approved on the eve of the election which would benefit the incumbent,” Vinay Prasad, an associate professor of medicine in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, told National Review. “The moment the election is over, then it’s suddenly, ‘Oh, let’s get that vaccine out quickly! Quickly! Quickly!’ and that ‘vaccines are great and they’re wonderful,’ but before, it’s, ‘Well, we’ve got to be careful about the safety.’”

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and FDA vaccine-advisory-committee member, was frequently quoted questioning the notion that a vaccine could be distributed before the end of the year.

“I think it’s possible you could see a vaccine in people’s arms next year — by the middle or end of next year. But this is unprecedented, so it’s hard to predict,” he told NBC News for a May “fact-check” titled “Coronavirus vaccine could come this year, Trump says. Experts say he needs a ‘miracle’ to be right.”

Offit was a little less bearish in an ABC News piece published the same day. “You’d have to be lucky,” he said of the Trump administration’s chances to push out a vaccine by year’s end. “It would be remarkable, but not completely ridiculous.”

“We have a fragile confidence in vaccines in this country. And we need to manage expectations,” he told the Washington Post, also for a piece on May 15. In June, he told CNN that “the way they are messaging it is a little frightening because they make a point of saying how quickly it is being done. It makes people think there are steps being skipped.”

In an interview on YouTube earlier this month, Offit said that he was pleasantly surprised by FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn’s decision not to approve the vaccine “before Election Day.”

“Safety-wise, I feel pretty good that you can say — at least you don’t have any relatively uncommon, severe side effects,” he said, adding that “it’s a small risk” the vaccine isn’t effective in the long term.

“I think something that’s 90 to 95 percent effective in two months, it’s likely to be highly effective six months later or a year later,” he stated.

Dr. Walter Orenstein is a professor at Emory University and the associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center — who also happened to serve  as director of the United States immunization program from 1988 to 2004. He was quoted by NBC News as saying it would be a “miracle” if vaccine were distributed before the end of the year.

Orenstein was also quoted in the Washington Post suggesting that the Trump administration might struggle to distribute the vaccine effectively even if one were developed quickly. “Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations save lives. A vaccine dose that remains in a vial is zero-percent effective,” he said.

In an ABC News article published in August, Orenstein disparaged Operation Warp Speed’s name, saying that “it has given people a perception that corners will be cut.”

“To my knowledge, none of those corners are being cut,” he stipulated.