Scientists get the credit, NOT Trump

The Pfizer vaccine was researched and developed by scientists. Specifically, a female Hungarian scientist who pioneered work on mRNA and two Muslim scientists who worked on the Covid vaccine for BioNTech/Pfizer.

Unlike Donald Trump who was apparently waiting for instructions from Beijing before he did anything, research investigators do not need anyone to tell them what they need to do in order to defeat a virus. Their executives look for making money and Covid was a big business opportunity so it wouldn’t be surprising that a vaccine would move to the top of the portfolio items before Trump had his first task force press briefing.

The protein structures, gene sequences and body of publications were already available before anyone knew Covid was a pandemic. The global research community had been doing work on coronavirus for at least a decade.

These researchers stood on the shoulders of the people, including Dr. Fauci, who did the preliminary work for decades in government and in the private sector. I don’t think people realize how much actual research private companies do. It’s substantial. Therapeutics don’t spring fully formed from the NIH like Athena, as valuable as its work is.

Donald didn’t direct this show, he didn’t write the script, he didn’t even fund much of it. It was all ready to go before the first case was detected. All he did was jump up and down and demand that researchers work faster and harder on projects they already worked on.

Yes, things were sped up. Yes, this vaccine is not a perfect solution. Yes, there will be adverse effects, though vastly more people will be saved by this vaccine than harmed by it. And Yes, researchers will take what they’ve learned from this vaccine and apply it to new and improved vaccines in the future.

But Donald Trump had almost nothing to do with the research or development and he sure as hell did everything wrong in getting it approved.

There are probably a lot of regulations leftover from the 20th century that could stand to be rewritten or discarded due to changes in our culture, industry or technology. But the FDA regulations exist fir a good reason even if some of them are excessive.

The FDA approves everything that goes into our bodies. Cutting corners to save time is not an option. EVER.

Trump should have stood back and let the FDA do its job. His antics were absolutely not helpful. No president should be allowed to behave like this again.

But it doesn’t matter what he tries to do to get praise for the vaccine. *I* know, as does every other scientist, that he deserves none of the credit for the cure and much of the blame for the raging pandemic in this country.

For once in my life, I want to see the hardworking, creative, insightful, intuitive, dedicated, intrinsically motivated and brilliant scientists get the fucking credit.

I’ve watched the scientific community being torn to shreds over the past 10 months. It’s been disregarded and disrespected. It’s work and contributions have been minimized. They’ve been yelled at by Trump like they’re third world sweatshop workers instead of professionals with years of experience in fields that Trump couldn’t even pronounce much less understand. Joe Biden has learned more and acted more responsibly in a few months than Donald has to this day.

Scientists don’t go into this job for the fame and glory and they sure don’t get the same monetary rewards as the salespeople and the marketing majors. They’re not heroes. They’re just people who love their fields of study and who wouldn’t mind getting credit for the work they do. A pat on the back, a “good job!” and maybe a commitment to strengthen the scientific general knowledge of the public would be nice.

I’m sure Biden and Harris will know what to say.

So say it.

Do the acknowledgments.