Betsy McCaughey | Posted: Apr 14, 2021 12:01
AM
In the race
to save lives, the United States and England are winning. A stunning 47% of
U.K. residents and 36% of U.S. residents have received at least one dose.
Compare that with the European Union, where only 15% have gotten at least one
jab. The U.S. and the U.K. are way ahead thanks to the brash nationalism of
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former President Donald Trump.
The U.S. is
now vaccinating as many as 4 million people a day, and President Joe Biden has
announced vaccines are plentiful enough that all adults will be eligible by May
1. A remarkable achievement. Biden gets some credit for distributing the shots,
but Trump is responsible for producing vaccines in record time and guaranteeing
that America had first dibs on the supply. The current president claims he
inherited a mess. In fact, he inherited a miracle -- Trump's Operation Warp
Speed.
In the
spring of 2020, Trump put America at the front of the line for whatever
vaccines would ultimately be produced. He had the foresight to contract with
not one or two but six different vaccine companies for a total of 800 million
doses. Not all six companies' vaccines would actually be approved and put into
use. He bet on all six because failure was not an option.
Operation
Warp Speed paid to manufacture the vaccines before clinical trials proved they
were safe and worked. Companies couldn't take that risk. It was a bold strategy
and it worked.
Trump
insisted he'd have vaccines ready by the end of 2020, a goal naysayers like
Anthony Fauci said was impossible. Prior to this, the fastest-ever vaccine
development -- for mumps in the 1960s -- took four years.
Johnson,
like Trump, showed the capitalist pluck to partner with the drug companies
early and lock in the U.K.'s future vaccine supply. Meanwhile, the European
Union -- a collection of 27 countries -- dithered over what to buy and at what
price. By the time the EU contracted with vaccine developers, 105 days after
Johnson signed his deals, it was slim pickings. That's largely why the European
nations lack supply now.
Looking
back, French President Emmanuel Macron admits: "We didn't shoot for the
stars. That should be a lesson. We were wrong to lack ambition, to lack the
madness ... to say: 'It's possible, let's do it.'"
Now, EU
countries are so desperate for supply that Hungary's bought 5 million doses
from the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm for a whopping $36 a dose --
probably the highest price in the world -- though Sinopharm refuses to release
clinical data showing the vaccine works. In fact, the shots may not work.
The U.K. has
plenty of supply, and Johnson regards that as a vindication of Brexit and proof
of the "innovative genius and commercial might of the private
sector." Spoken like his buddy, Trump.
As for
America's success, credit Trump. On March 2, Biden tried to rewrite history. He
claimed: "When I came into office, the prior administration had contracted
for not nearly enough vaccine to cover adults in America. We rectified that."
Sorry, even
the left-leaning Kaiser Health News rates that "mostly false."
Without the contracts giving the U.S. first dibs on supply, America would have
been left high and dry like the Europeans. Worse, the vaccines might never have
been produced. Trump's intervention made warp speed vaccine development less
risky for the companies doing it.
That's key
because this is not the last pandemic. Trump's Operation Warp Speed is a model
to follow next time.
In 2019,
before COVID-19 struck, Trump's Council of Economic Advisers warned that a flu
pandemic could cost 500,000 American lives. The CEA said emerging technologies
could make it possible to develop a vaccine against an invading disease in a
matter of months, instead of years, provided government could reduce the
financial risks.
The advice
was prescient, and Trump took it. The rest is history.
Betsy
McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of "The
Next Pandemic," available at Amazon.com. Contact her at
betsy@betsymccaughey.com or on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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