Pfizer’s vaccine results “a political conspiracy”

SUMMARY: According to The Washington Post “President Trump is lashing out at the Food and Drug Administration following a disclosure Monday that an experimental coronavirus vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is more than 90 percent effective, convinced the timing — six days after Election Day — proves the “medical deep state” deliberately tried to sabotage his electoral prospects by delaying the results and Azar is agreeing with him. Very sad.

Pfizer did not take government money to develop a COVID vaccine and said the release of preliminary vaccine data was based on receiving the data on Monday. That, however, didn’t stop a conspiracy loving imbecile from blaming the FDA and Pfizer.

Shortly after Trump heard the news Monday, he demanded Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar “get to the bottom” of what happened with Pfizer, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the president’s actions. Azar, Hahn’s boss, pointedly contradicted Hahn in front of Vice President Pence, asserting that the FDA’s actions had in fact contributed to a delay in Pfizer’s announcement. He also asked questions that some officials thought suggested Azar believed Pfizer’s timing was affected by political motivations.

Of course this makes no sense but today conspiracy theories live on the Internet.

According to JAMA, “between January 2010 and June 2020, the FDA approved 21 vaccines, most commonly for influenza (5 [23.8%]) and meningococcus (5 [23.8%]). Of these, 4 (19.0%) received Accelerated Approval. The median premarket clinical development period (investigational new drug submission to FDA approval) was 8.1 (interquartile range [IQR], 6.1–10.5) years, including a median FDA review period (BLA submission to FDA approval) of 12.0 (10.8–21.0) months”.

Pfizer is indeed working quickly but their motivation is profit not political. We learned that the CEO of Pfizer sold over five million dollars in stock after the announcement but let’s still blame “the deep pharma state”.

While the Pfizer vaccine news gives us hope, we also have to remember that it has a long way to go, and there are major distribution challenges since the vaccine has to be stored under cool conditions.

President Elect Biden has the challenge of choosing a healthcare people in his Administration who can restore public trust and not see a conspiracy in everything. He also has a challenge to lower drug prices at a time when pharma company profit margins are at an all time high.

For me January 19th can’t come soon enough.

Originally published at https://worldofdtcmarketing.com on November 12, 2020.