BUT OF COURSE: Biden’s heralded vaccine goal just one day ahead of Trump’s criticized plan.
Despite White House chest-thumping and media praise for his plan to have enough vaccinations for all Americans by the end of last month, President Joe Biden’s goal was just a day better than former President Donald Trump’s plan and has followed the former administration’s script nearly exactly.
That plan, which cut vaccination development and distribution from the normal 10 years to just 10 months, was a “great American success story of grit and innovation,” according to a new analysis of “Operation Warp Speed,” Trump’s gamble to shake up the process.
In a new insider analysis, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former coronavirus task force member and national security adviser to task force chief former Vice President Mike Pence, said the Trump team cast aside doubts and missed opportunities by previous administrations to work with drug companies and distributors to speed COVID-19 vaccines. . . .
Trump, however, in a statement Thursday amid the release of Fauci emails, noted, “Fauci also didn’t put an emphasis on speed of vaccine production because he thought it would take 3, 4, or maybe even 5 years to create. I got it done in less than 9 months with Operation Warp Speed. In retrospect, the vaccine is saving the world.”
The analysis of Operation Warp Speed did note that the Biden administration has not continued the close cooperation with states implemented by Pence and has only changed the goal of full vaccination of the nation by one day.
“The Biden administration has largely carried on many of the operational components of OWS, including nearly the same vaccine rollout plan with a target of all adults having access to the vaccine by the end of May — a one day difference from the OWS goal of making 300 million doses available by June 1, 2021,” wrote Kellogg and two doctors with the institute, Jacob Olidort and Heidi Overton.
The analysis said that while following Trump’s plan, Biden has only made tweaks, presumably a sign that it is the model for pandemic responses of the future.
The press won’t note this.