Read on Twitter
Pfizer declined to take government money for research and development and is actively distancing itself from Operation Warp Speed because it did not want its work politicized by the Trump administration https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/status/1325794339335921667
I've seen some tweets about the govt contract w/ Pfizer. That came three months after Operation Warp Speed began. It is for manufacturing and distribution. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/22/pfizer-biontech-vaccine-contract-coronavirus/
Public health experts have had plenty of good to say about OWS. But the rush to give Trump credit for a vaccine by politically motivated actors is precisely the sort of politicization scientists have feared. Instead of celebrating, there's a weird cultish parsing of credit.
This vaccine, which is still being studied and is months away from being distributed, is not about the president.
More here on Pfizer's research: "Instead, Pfizer plowed $2 billion of its own money into the project and then struck a $1.95 billion contract with the U.S. government to provide 100 million doses, contingent on the vaccine being effective." https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/09/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-effective/
Kathrin Janson, head of vaccine research at Pfizer, in The Times: “We were never part of the Warp Speed,” she said. “We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html
The Pfizer and BioNTech announcement about the $1.95 billion agreement with HHS detailing how the money is contingent upon the delivery of an effective vaccine (so, not a blind investment in vaccine research) https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-agreement-us-government-600
And a smart piece by @pbump parsing all of this for people who don't have time to make sense of the White House's misleading claims. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/09/no-pfizers-apparent-vaccine-success-is-not-function-trumps-operation-warp-speed/
Lastly, below is a smart and concise explanation of the role government *did* play in this. Again, this is a classic Trump-era situation in which exaggerated and misleading claims by the president's people obscure and negate credit that is actually due https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1325823521189212160
& now to close the spin cycle from all sides, below is an update from Daniel in which Pfizer lines up its comments w/ those (like Murphy above) who want to stress that govt money *is* involved in opening a market for distribution after a successful vaccine https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1325850337429901313
And I've deleted a separate thread on this topic responding to a tweet by Nikki Haley b/c, bluntly, it didn't have a nuanced enough distinction at the top re: research and development funding, this one has much more information and explanation, and I'm sick of cross posting lol
