Damn the torpedoes, warp speed ahead

Posted

Things change a lot from day to day. Maybe it WAS an undercooked bat rather than a careless Chinese lab worker. But it’ll make little difference by Christmas or so—according to the latest Trump pipe dream. By year’s end, we will have have gotten our economy en route back to “normal” at a cost of only 150,000 American lives or so. Disregard past differences and Chinese face-saving politicization of the surging virus pandemic. All will be forgiven and such things as the May 20 headline “Orders on e-commerce sites from China delayed, retailers there unresponsive” are mere coincidence.

We have a new weapon now, “Operation Warp Speed.” The military side of that seems to be what Donald calls “the super duper missile,” 17 times faster than anything now in existence, announced during unveiling of the flag for his newly-created U.S. Space Force. But so much for ego of the military sort . . .

The “Operation Warp Speed” development of an effective vaccine so far has suddenly taken us well past the full pews of Easter to about New Year’s 2021. That’s the offhand estimate of OWS chief Moncef Slaoui, former chairman of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline and current venture capitalist. He figures “We will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine . . . by the end of 2020.” And so we’ve jumped ahead from the 2020 election to the realties of Santa Claus.

Coincidentally, until he resigned to take on his new job at the White House, Slauoi served on the board of Moderna, a biotechnology company that’s a coronavirus vaccine going through clinical trials to see if it is effective. He still holds some $10 million in stock options there.

Slauoi’s estimate seems unrealistic but is in keeping with Trump’s self-serving optimism while ignoring the rational realism of most medical experts. A New York Times story that has been utilized here points out that “the fastest a new vaccine has been developed and distributed is four years and most have taken considerably longer.” Trump, meanwhile, insists that somewhere exists an instant solution with his name and a dollar-sign on it—no matter how many people die in the process—which brings us to The Washington Post’s accompanying information in The Seattle Times.

DRUG PROMOTED BY TRUMP AS ‘GAME CHANGER’ INCREASINGLY LINKED TO DEATHS OF VIRUS PATIENTS. The story began: “For two months, President Donald Trump repeatedly pitched hydroxychloroquine as a safe and effective treatment for coronavirus, asking would-be patients ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’

“Growing evidence shows that, for many, the answer is their lives,” according to the Post story by Ariana Eunjung Cha, Toluse Olorunnipa and Laurie McGinley,

The report included testimony from a former top vaccine official removed from his post last month—testimony alleging that Trump’s White House pressured government scientists to sign off on the untested drug in March, at the same time the president was pitching hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer.”

The story concludes with a description of Veterans Affairs patients hospitalized with coronavirus. It found no benefits and higher death rates among those taking hydroxychloroquine. More than 27% treated with with hydroxychloroquine died, and 22% of this treated with hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin—compared with an 11.4 death rate in those not treated with the drugs.

An Associated Press story Tuesday began “President Donald Trump said Monday that he is taking a malaria drug to protect against the new coronavirus despite warnings from his own government that it should only be administered for COVID-19 or research setting because of potentially fatal side effects. Trump told reporters he had been taking hydroxychloroquine and a zinc supplement daily for about a week and a half.

Donald continues to say that he “has heard” good things (from whom it is not quite clear) about hydroxychloroquine. Of course, any such “good things” must have been from a survivor or two
as there are no anecdotal reviews from non-survivors.

It’s all typical lies of course, as he continues his attempt to convince the public his early support of hydroxychloroquine doesn’t kill people—which it does. Meanwhile numerous tweeters and other commenters urge him to carry on if he is really taking such pills.

A separate story by two other Post writers was headlined MEDICAL JOURNAL CALLS FOR TRUMP’S OUSTER OVER CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE. The “Lancet,” founded in Great Britain in 1823, is one of the world’s oldest such professional publications.