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Pence, his wife Karen, and the nation’s top public health official, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the White House annex.
US Vice President Mike Pence receives the COVID-19 vaccine at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, on December 18, 2020. Image: AFP.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Vice President received a COVID-19 vaccine injected live on television on Friday in a public display designed to boost national confidence in the drug, even as President Donald Trump caused confusion over the approval of a second anti-COVID medicine.
“Building confidence in the vaccine is what brings us here this morning,” Vice President Mike Pence said after being injected at the White House, joking: “I didn’t feel anything.”
Pence, his wife Karen, and the nation’s top public health official, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the White House annex.
Noting the importance given to the event, leading infectious diseases Anthony Fauci and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, were also in the room.
The notable absence was Trump himself. It has sent mixed messages about the severity of COVID-19 throughout the crisis, even as the death toll in the United States surpassed 300,000 this month.
However, he wanted to take credit for the historic speed of vaccine development. Early Friday morning, he tweeted that a second drug made by Moderna had been “overwhelmingly approved” and that “distribution would begin immediately.”
Modern vaccine approved by overwhelming majority. Distribution to start immediately.
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2020
This caused some confusion.While an advisory panel recommended emergency use approval for Moderna’s vaccine on Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to deliver the final verdict allowing distribution, which is expected on Friday.
Trump himself has made it clear that he does not plan to get vaccinated imminently, citing the belief that his recovery from a brief but severe episode of COVID has given him immunity.
“You will receive the vaccine as soon as your medical team determines that it is best. But your priority is the front-line workers, the ones in long-term care facilities,” said White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. .
However, Trump’s relative silence on the issue indicates that he does not want to be associated with the image of the people taking the photographs.
This would be in line with his attitude throughout most of the pandemic that the dangers of COVID-19 were being exaggerated as a tactic to damage his chances in the November elections, which he lost, although he refuses to budge.
The election winner, Joe Biden, will soon be taking the vaccine in public.
Large numbers of Americans subscribe to the anti-vaccination movement and hostility to COVID-19 vaccines, in particular, has been sparked by influential right-wing media personalities.
“It feels fake because it is, it’s too slick,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson, one of Trump’s favorites, told his viewers Thursday night.
There is also a focus of mistrust among African-Americans, a group that Adams, who is black, turned to after receiving his fix.
Americans should not “allow misinformation and mistrust to lead you to make a decision that is bad for your health,” he said.
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