In recent days, the liberal media have dedicated a lot of effort into stoking fear the coronavirus vaccines being developed by multiple pharmaceutical companies under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which put the full weight of the U.S. government behind developing and distributing a safe and effective vaccine. Of course, they were taking their cues from the Biden campaign and Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), who said last week she “would not trust” a vaccine developed under President Trump.
But during a taped interview with CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell, which aired Thursday evening, Moderna president Dr. Stephen Hoge shot down their coordinated fear-mongering by admitting he was NOT feeling political pressure.
“Is Moderna feeling political pressure,” O’Donnell wondered, the undercurrent was that Trump was putting people in danger by rushing vaccine development.
In his response, Hoge explained that they weren’t feeling political pressure, but they were feeling social pressure because they wanted to put an end to the pandemic. He also noted they wanted to be transparent about it:
We haven’t been feeling direct political pressure but definitely feel the social pressure of this moment. The goal of developing a vaccine is not to get a vaccine approved, it’s to stop the pandemic. That will only happen if hundreds of millions of people – hundreds of millions of Americans agree to vaccinate. That will only happen if they have confidence in the data and the vaccine. So, what we did today in publishing our fully unredacted protocol but also in what we did in our presentations around that. As the goal of being transparent.
O’Donnell appeared to have not gotten the answer she was looking for and shifted gears to probing for a cover-up. “So, will Moderna commit to publicly releasing all of its results before a vaccine becomes available,” she pressed. “We're absolutely committed to publishing and releasing the data before the vaccine becomes available,” the doctor replied frankly.
Things took a turn toward the bewildering when O’Donnell wanted to know, “What’s the goal of this vaccine?”
“The goal of this vaccine, of all vaccines, in this case, is to stop the pandemic,” he answered. “We all want to get back to a normal life. If we can reduce this to a common cold, then I think most of us would feel like we can get back most of our lives.”
What else did you expect him to say, Norah?
In the most substantive part of the interview, Dr. Hoge explained how Moderna’s vaccine was going or work (by reducing the severity) and how it showed great promise in elderly patients (click “expand”):
O’DONNELL: So, given that Moderna mRNA vaccine does not prevent infection but it does reduce the severity of the infection, do some age groups fare better than others?
HOGE: It’s a great question. So, first, we don't know whether it will prevent infection or not yet. We’ll wait for the phase three data. And it’s possible, but we think the more likely outcome is it will prevent severe disease, particularly COVID-19.
What’s really exciting news that we announced today is that we shared some data we previously presented to the CDC on elderly Americans who have been in our vaccine studies in phase one, and showed we had the same level of protection in the elderly as we’ve seen in the younger populations. That gives us hope, and reason for optimism that actually our vaccine will be able to protect those highest-risk populations, particularly those that are over the age of 65 who are bearing the brunt of COVID-19.
Now, despite Hoge’s admission of feeling no political pressure from the White House, the liberal media will likely still stoke fear of the vaccine and blame Trump for polls showing a lack of trust in the vaccine.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CBS Evening News
September 17, 2020
6:37:31 p.m. EasternNORAH O’DONNELL: Today the biotech firm Moderna took an unprecedented attempt at transparency releasing its protocols on how it will determine if its coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective. The company's vaccine uses what is called mRNA technology. That’s a type of vaccine that has never been brought to market. We spoke with Moderna’s president, Dr. Stephen Hoge in our series Racing to a Cure.
[Cuts to video]
How soon will we know when a Moderna vaccine is working?
DR. STEPHEN HOGE: It pretty hard to know for sure. We have announced today that we made a good progress in enrolling the phase three trial. So, we actually enrolled over 25,000 of the 30,000 participates in that study. But now we're going to depend upon those people, unfortunately, getting sick. Our best estimate is the earliest it can happen could be the later part of the fall, November, December time horizon. But it could happen much later or much sooner depending upon the rate of transmission in the country.
O’DONNELL: Is Moderna feeling political pressure?
HOGE: We haven’t been feeling direct political pressure but definitely feel the social pressure of this moment. The goal of developing a vaccine is not to get a vaccine approved, it’s to stop the pandemic. That will only happen if hundreds of millions of people – hundreds of millions of Americans agree to vaccinate. That will only happen if they have confidence in the data and the vaccine. So, what we did today in publishing our fully unredacted protocol but also in what we did in our presentations around that. As the goal of being transparent.
O’DONNELL: So, will Moderna commit to publicly releasing all of its results before a vaccine becomes available?
HOGE: We're absolutely committed to publishing and releasing the data before the vaccine becomes available.
O’DONNELL: What’s the goal of this vaccine?
HOGE: The goal of this vaccine, of all vaccines, in this case, is to stop the pandemic. We all want to get back to a normal life. If we can reduce this to a common cold, then I think most of us would feel like we can get back most of our lives.
O’DONNELL: So, given that Moderna mRNA vaccine does not prevent infection but it does reduce the severity of the infection, do some age groups fare better than others?
HOGE: It’s a great question. So, first, we don't know whether it will prevent infection or not yet. We’ll wait for the phase three data. And it’s possible, but we think the more likely outcome is it will prevent severe disease, particularly COVID-19.
What’s really exciting news that we announced today is that we shared some data we previously presented to the CDC on elderly Americans who have been in our vaccine studies in phase one, and showed we had the same level of protection in the elderly as we’ve seen in the younger populations. That gives us hope, and reason for optimism that actually our vaccine will be able to protect those highest-risk populations, particularly those that are over the age of 65 who are bearing the brunt of COVID-19.
O’DONNELL: Dr. Stephen Hoge, thank you so much.
HOGE: Thank you very much for your time, Norah.
