Trump Accuses Pfizer of Holding Vaccine Announcement Until After Election

President Trump put his weight behind an accusation that many of us have speculated on for weeks, accusing Pfizer of intentionally delaying their announcement of a successful coronavirus vaccine until after the election so as not to give the president a boost going into the big day. At a White House briefing in which he formalized policies intended to slash drug prices, Trump said that he was hopeful that the policies would stay in place even after he left the presidency behind.

“I just hope they keep it. I hope they have the courage to keep it because the powerful drug lobby, Big Pharma, is putting pressure on people like you wouldn’t believe,” Trump said. “Together, these reforms will save American patients many many billions of dollars every single year. For generations, the American people have been abused by big Pharma and their army of lawyers, lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for politicians.

“Big Pharma ran millions of dollars of negative advertisements against me during the campaign, which I won, by the way, but, you know, you’ll find that out — almost 74 million votes,” he continued.

The president then turned his attention to Pfizer, surmising that they intentionally withheld their vaccine information to get back at him for policies that had hurt their profits.

“Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words not come out with a vaccine, until just after the election. That’s because of what I did with ‘favored nations’ and these other elements — instead of their original plan to assess the data in October,” he said.

“So they waited and waited and waited, and decided they thought would come out with it a few days after the election,” he continued. “And it would have probably had an impact. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t have. I’m sure they would have found the ballots someplace, the Democrats and the group. These corrupt games will not deter us from doing what’s right for the American people.”

In an announcement this week, Pfizer said they hope to get the coronavirus vaccine rolling out to the public before the end of the year.

“The drug maker Pfizer said on Friday that it had submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, setting in motion an accelerated regulatory process that could allow the first Americans to get a vaccine by the middle of December,” reports The New York Times. “Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, announced Wednesday that the vaccine was safe and 95 percent effective, and that it also worked well in older people and in preventing severe Covid-19.”

Whether or not those promising numbers hold up when the vaccine hits the general population is something we’ll all be waiting (eagerly) to find out.