BIDEN: RAMP UP SHOTS, PREPARE FOR “DARK WINTER”

President-elect Joe Biden told a press conference on Friday that one of his top priorities as president will be to increase COVID-19 inoculations and promised his administration plans to “manage the hell out of this operation.”
Biden did not mention how he will convince those who refuse to take the shot that the vaccine is safe, but he said he wants to create more places where people can receive a free vaccine. The New York Times reported that Biden gave a somber assessment of where the country stands in its fight against the virus and said the U.S. will remain in a “very dark winter.” He said, “Things will get worse before they get better.”
The paper reported Biden has said it is his goal to get “100 million COVID vaccine shots into the arms of the American people” by the time he reaches his 100th day in office.
A recent poll showed nearly half of the Republicans living in Alaska said they will refuse the vaccine, according to Alaska Public Media. This compares to 13 percent of Democrats who were polled.
Mike Porcaro, a conservative talk radio host in the state, said, “That surprises me. Forty-five percent seems real high.”
“It’s not so much due to any inherent anti-vaccine type views,” Matt Larkin, a Republican strategist whose firm conducted the survey, told the outlet. “It’s more specifically around how quickly this was developed. And people wanted to take a wait and see approach.”
The Times also points out that Biden’s announcement comes a day after he said he would push a $1.9 trillion stimulus to help businesses deal with the economic impact from government-mandated lockdowns. Biden also called for new funding for 100,000 public health workers that will focus solely on vaccine education and contact tracing.
TRENDPOST: As we have been reporting in the Trends Journal, the COVID vaccines in circulation were approved under the U.S. FDA’s Emergency Authorization Use protocol after only two months of safety trials. Full safety trials typically take years, not months.
As reported in our 15 December issue, four of the 21 members of the FDA Advisory Committee did not vote in favor of releasing the vaccines. One of them, Dr. Oveta Fuller, Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan, explained, “My vote wasn’t, ‘No, never,’ my vote was, ‘No, not yet’… I was actually surprised at the vote. I thought there would be a lot more ‘no’ votes.”