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Pfizer announced positive trial results for their coronavirus vaccine today. That’s great news, but it’s undermined when Dems & others have pushed a conspiracy that, because Orange Man Bad, the vaccine won’t work.

Don’t remember? Well follow me down memory lane.

Perhaps the most well-known anti-vaccine voice on this was @KamalaHarris, who kicked up a firestorm when she suggested she wouldn’t trust or take a vaccine coming out of the Trump Administration.

But she wasn’t alone.

Where bad and dangerous coronavirus ideas go, @NYGovCuomo is never far behind. By now you’ve surely heard of his comments that it’s “bad news” that we got a vaccine during the Trump Admin. Just a vile comment.

But what you may not remember is that @NYGovCuomo has been saying since September that he doesn’t trust the president or the FDA (!!) about a vaccine.

(No pushback from @MSNBC on this one, by the way)

You may be familiar with one @JoeBiden, who shared a similar perspective as his running mate.

Just look at that @nytimes headline (which is sure to go down the memoryhole eventually) and tell me that perspective is fine and dandy.

We had a similar lack of confidence on Capitol Hill. Here’s @TinaSmithMN, suggesting that political pressure would undermine a safe and effective vaccine.

To be clear, this can only rightly be called a conspiracy theory.

We had some former electeds, too. Surely you remember @KatieHill4CA?

She suggested - again, as with all of these, absent evidence - that a vaccine approved by the Trump Admin couldn’t be trusted.

This tweet from @DavidJollyFL is presented without comment.

We also had some almost politicians, including @CalforNC, who suggested that he would be “hesitant” to receive a vaccination, approved by the most advanced medical oversight body in the world, during a global pandemic.

The media didn’t help.

Some of them, like @ForeignPolicy, were very clear about what they thought of a vaccine approved by a Trump Administration. This one from @Laurie_Garrett.

Check out that highlighted line.

You won’t be surprised to see the media’s chief conspiracymonger, @JoyAnnReid, get in on this one.

She went from lambasting POTUS for not caring to find a vaccine in May to suggesting *this morning* that she wouldn’t have trusted one anyway.

Remarkable mental gymnastics.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for @TheAtlantic and @JeffreyGoldberg.

“Trump’s Operation Warp Speed is an election ploy” is...not a quote that has held up particularly well, @juliettekayyem.

We saw the same sentiment elsewhere. Here’s @sbg1, talking to @OliviaTroye, suggesting an ineffective or unsafe vaccine would be rushed out before Election Day.

Hope the fear-porn clicks were worth it for @NewYorker.

Across the street at @NYMag we got the same perspective from @jonathanchait, a man who has never seen a left-wing conspiracy theory he didn’t like.

We could’ve expected that sentiment would extend to Trump’s killer vaccine push.

So much journalisming from @VanityFair.

It wasn’t quite a banner couple of weeks for the opinion pages, either. Here’s one from @USATODAY, written by Jason Sattler.

And plenty of blue checks jumped in to defend the Democrats and the media.

Here’s @AprilDRyan excusing Harris’s comments by pivoting to...Trump and Pence, as ever.

Two rights and a wrong and all that.

And many just flat out gaslit their audience around what various electeds had said.

Here’s @kylegriffin1 pretending that Biden didn’t say what he said above.

This is, regrettably, only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to lefty bluechecks undermining confidence in the vaccine.

Leading the charge is the increasingly unhinged @tribelaw, who suggested the virus was as lethal as drinking Lysol.

We had all of Twitter’s favorite doctors behind the idea that Trump was going to push through a vaccine. Here’s @DrEricDing.

We also saw a lot of the usual suspects. @donwinslow is proving more and more reliable on this front.

These tweets were pretty shameful.

Welcome back to the program, @CheriJacobus, who pushed the same conspiracy that Trump was going to rush through an unsafe vaccine right before the election (which, I will remind you, is now in the past).

Running short of space

Bill Gates? @BillGates, alright.
Also @Susan_Hennessey
And @NancyLeeGrahn

Other celebrities got involved, too.

What are we doing here, @cher?

It should go without saying, but undermining trust in a vaccine in the midst of a global pandemic to score political points or clicks is absolutely ghastly.

Now that we’re knocking on the door of a vaccine, will these people be held to account for undermining trust?

I doubt it.

If our media had any dignity, this never would have been allowed to stand when it first happened.

But now that events have shredded all these contentions? It’s absolute malpractice that the media ignores it.

This will get people killed. There’s no way around it.

Special shout out to @BuzzFeedNews