The Good Old Days.
Oh for the good old days…. An excerpt from an article in the New York Times April 30 2020, after Trump and Fauci announced Operation Warp Speed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-operation-warp-speed.html
Unfortunately Trump was a huge patsy.
In more normal times, a vaccine can take upward of a decade to get through all the regulatory approvals. Some officials note the dangers of rushing: During the Ford administration, a rushed vaccine for swine flu caused several dozen deaths and damaging side effects.
But Mr. Trump has made no secret of his impatience with the warnings, from Dr. Fauci and others, about how long it takes to prove both the safety and the efficacy of a vaccine through clinical trials. In a meeting with pharmaceutical and biotechnology executives on March 2, before deaths from the virus started mounting in large numbers, Mr. Trump interrupted several times to ask how long it would take for each of the executives to get into production.
“So you’re talking over the next few months, you think you could have a vaccine,” Mr. Trump said to one executive. He answered: “Correct. Correct. With Phase 2.”
Dr. Fauci intervened: “Yeah, you won’t have a vaccine. You’ll have a vaccine to go into testing.” Then he added, “A year to a year and a half.”
Mr. Trump responded: “A couple of months, right? I mean, I like the sound of a couple of months better, I must be honest with you.”