“It’s very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs,” Trump wrote on Monday.
“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree!”
That’s an understatement.
The COVID vaccination has been controversial from its beginning.
The vaccination mandates of the COVID era — such as those imposed under the Biden administration on the military, various jurisdictions requiring them for police and other emergency workers — sparked some of the biggest political fights of the pandemic era (along with battles over freedom of religion and freedom of speech, among others).
As stories abounded about previously healthy young people falling victim to health problems, suspicions grew on a national level that the vaccinations could lead to bigger problems than COVID — that the cure was literally worse than the disease.
The fact that social media companies and the legacy media worked to squelch debate about the vaccinations made it worse.
And top celebrities on the left telling outright lies about the vaccine — such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow claiming in March 2021 that “the virus stops with every vaccinated person” — only embedded suspicion further.
Now, in Trump’s second term, disagreement over the vaccine is roiling federal health agencies under Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic who has changed the standards for who should be recommended for COVID vaccination.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration fired Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez, as CNBC reported, amid disputes over the COVID vaccine. That was followed by the resignation of four top CDC officials, The Hill reported.
Trump alluded to the friction in his post.
“With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” he wrote.
Trump wrote that he had received assurances from major drug manufacturers about the effectiveness of vaccination, but that the data has been sufficiently shared with the American people.
“I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not???”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, was key to Kennedy’s confirmation as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. A physician as well as a politician, he was hesitant about Kennedy because of the nominee’s vaccine skepticism, but said he would foster an “unprecedentedly close relationship” with Kennedy once he was confirmed, according to a Politico report from February.
In a post on the social media platform X on Monday, he applauded Trump’s “call for radical transparency.”
“People who criticize President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed typically misrepresent and carefully select ‘their facts,’” he wrote.
“We should be honest about the success of Operation Warp Speed. President Trump bending the bureaucracy to his will to accomplish safe vaccine development within one year was one of his crowning achievements!”
