Have You Heard the Big News About the Vaccine?

In a stunning development, Pfizer announced today that its early data shows that its COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90 percent effective.

“This is really a spectacular number,” Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, said to The New York Times. “I wasn’t expecting it to be this high. I was preparing myself for something like 55 percent.”

Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said to the Times that if the final vaccine is 90% effective, it “would be higher than your regular flu vaccine, and this vaccine could have a serious impact on bending the curve of this outbreak.”

This is big news, very big news. Considering the historic devastation COVID-19 pandemic has brought to our planet in 2020, one would think that major news outlets would go all-in with this remarkable development.

And yet, when I checked The New York Times, CNN, Fox and MSNBC websites, none gave it major prominence. The Washington Post included the item in its major headline of the day, connecting it to the stock market: “Biden Takes Steps to Fight Pandemic; Markets Soar on Vaccine News.”

I’m not sure if the Post editors caught the irony in that headline: After all, what better way to fight the pandemic than with a promising vaccine?

Whether one loves or hate President Trump, we must give him credit for his Operation Warp Speed initiative, which has supported a massive effort to develop, produce and distribute an effective vaccine and treatment.

Whether one loves or hate President Trump, we must give him credit for his Operation Warp Speed initiative.

According to the Times, “On Monday, a spokeswoman for Pfizer clarified that the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine.”

In other words, Trump’s zeal to get a vaccine that can save lives and restart our broken economy seems to be paying off.

President-elect Biden congratulated the “brilliant women and men who helped produce this breakthrough” but cautioned that “for the foreseeable future, a mask remains a more potent weapon against the virus.” That may well be true, but if I were Biden, I would also announce that my top priority will be to build on Trump’s success and accelerate the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine– which would represent a huge global accomplishment. I would even express gratitude for the initiative.

If that’s not a statement of “national unity,” I don’t know what is.