Joe Biden in his turn seized on Wednesday, in his stronghold of Wilmington, the theme of the vaccine against COVID-19, which has become central in the campaign of Donald Trump, engaged at a rapid pace in a race to catch up before the election of November 3.
The Democratic candidate will deliver a speech Wednesday afternoon on the pandemic, which he uses as the most tragic symbol of what he sees as the President’s inability to govern.
The team of the former vice president of Barack Obama jumped on a response from Donald Trump on Tuesday night during a television show, in which he again sought to reassure Americans by saying that the coronavirus would eventually disappear over time – as nearly a thousand Americans still die from the virus every day, and the official death toll will reach 200,000 in the coming days, a toll that is itself underestimated.
“Everything is going to be fine, it’s disappearing. And it will disappear even faster with vaccines, ”Donald Trump said on ABC channel.
He then spoke of the construction of collective immunity, that is to say the natural contamination of a sufficiently high proportion of the population to stop the circulation of the virus, a level which is reached in return for a number of proportional death. But he apparently got the word wrong, since he said “herd mentality” instead of “herd immunity”.
“Trump confirmed again this evening that after allowing the worst health crisis in 100 years to worsen for eight months, he not only has no plan, but he does not understand anything,” said the spokesperson for Joe Biden, Kate Bedingfield.
Still, the vaccine race is moving fast in the United States, with two candidates (Pfizer and Moderna) on the verge of recruiting 30,000 participants in their placebo-controlled clinical trials.
“We are a few weeks away from having one,” Donald Trump repeated Tuesday, without specifying whether he was talking about the availability of results or an official authorization. “It could be three, four weeks.”
The availability of a vaccine is deemed unlikely by senior officials in its own administration, due to the natural flow of clinical trials: each participant should receive two doses three or four weeks apart, then wait at least two more weeks for see a possible effect compared to the placebo group … People who were injected this week will therefore receive their second dose in October, etc.
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Transparency?
An official of Operation Warp Speed, who coordinates the government’s entire vaccine strategy, announced on Wednesday that logistics were being put in place to distribute the first doses of vaccine within 24 hours of a possible emergency authorization by the Medicines Agency (FDA).
It is the integrity of this authorization process that is now in doubt, despite promises from the FDA and the laboratories to respect the usual standards and to authorize a vaccine only if the tests show that it reduces the incidence of COVID-19 by at least 50%.
“I want full transparency on vaccines,” Joe Biden said on September 6, accusing Donald Trump of undermining the confidence of the general public.
Peter Lurie, a former senior FDA official, tells AFP that it is not uncommon for phase 3 trials of drugs or vaccines to fail, despite positive results in previous phases on a few hundred participants – – this was the case with an experimental vaccine against herpes.
Could the White House intervene to approve a vaccine as early as October, despite opposition from FDA experts?
“If the health department wanted to override it, they have the power,” says Peter Lurie.
This has only been done on extremely rare occasions in the agency’s history, notably in 2011, when the administration of Barack Obama decided not to follow an FDA advice in favor of the pill. next day is available without a prescription.