[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 03-11-2021).]

I think this is an actual press release from the Office of Donald J. Trump.

If someone has a reliable report that it is FAKE NEWS, I'd like to see that here.

I have two "beefs" about this statement. Or criticisms.

The former President asserts that if it were not for the Trump administration's "Warp Speed" project, it would have been at least 5 years (I take that as 5 years from December 31, 2019, when WHO first became aware of a new kind of disease in China) before the possibility of Americans being vaccinated against Covid.

I think that's ridiculous. I see the Covid-19 vaccine development as having been driven mostly by the pharmaceuticals industry itself, rather than being some kind of government-directed project. If there is a Trump administration "secret sauce" in this effort, I don' t know what it would be.

Pfizer, in particular, was very eager to develop a Covid vaccine as soon as it was apparent that Covid was becoming a global pandemic.

Bill Gates, among others, has said that the Trump administration's Warp Speed vaccines project was the one aspect of the "all of government" Covid response where the Trump administration turned in a "highlights reel" performance. They did good. Very good.

But I don't think it would have been any different had someone else been elected President in 2016. Whether it would have been President Hillary Clinton, or working the alternative reality time machine in the forwards direction, President Joe Biden--not much different.

As I understand it, it was the infectious disease and vaccine experts at NIH and CDC that liaised with the various pharmaceutical companies and evaluated which companies were best positioned to develop a Covid vaccine ASAP. That's how the federal money was doled out to the various pharmaceutical companies. I don't think it was much different than the research grants that go to universities and scientists from the National Science Foundation every year, in terms of process.

The other "beef" is where the statement adds parenthetically that Covid-19 is often referred to as the "China Virus."

This comes after Asian-Americans and their friends have been using the mainstream media and the common social media platforms to document a number of unprovoked physical assaults on Asian-Americans in subway stations (I think) and in various other public spaces.

It's "par for the course" for Donald J. Trump that he would not omit another opportunity to say "China Virus" even after the publicity about these unprovoked attacks on Asian-Americans.

Now you can argue about whether this attack or the other attack had anything to do with Covid-19 or with any of the remarks about Covid from Donald Trump.

It's still a dumb thing for the former President to come out with. (They're talking about this right now on MSNBC.)

The new book "Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century" from Josh Rogin reveals that many of the statements that came from President Trump during 1Q 2020--when the Covid pandemic was first gathering speed in the U.S.--were originally from the mouth of China's authoritarian leader Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping had conversations with President Trump where Xi Jinping would give false assurances (or assurances that soon proved to be false) to President Trump about how China had the Covid outbreak under control and that the U.S. had nothing to worry about, and President Trump relayed Xi Ping's false assurances to the American people,

But other than these two "nitpicks" it's not a bad statement from the Office of Donald J. Trump.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-12-2021).]

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-14-2021).]