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Confidence in the vaccine is low for several reasons, most crucially bc President Trump has downplayed the severity of the virus and ridiculed science but Dems arent blameless. Governors like Cuomo in NY said FDA wasn’t good enough and set up their own panels. This was mostly 1/ https://twitter.com/abettel/status/1337753770898415620
A political stunt which @Tim_Walz this week called extremely unhelpful. VP-elect Kamala Harris said she wouldn’t trust Trump (she meant she wanted to hear from scientists) but it further muddled a message and questioned government competence. 2/
All of that pales into comparison to Mark Meadows threatening to fire the FDA chief for not moving fast enough. No false equivalencies - but Biden is inheriting a very broken system and public made skeptical by both parties. 4/
His challenge @rachel_roubein and I report is to get the states and feds and top scientists singing from the same hymnal. States will need money and direction. As @PeterHotez says a few PSAs are not nearly enough when there is so much misinformation in the media and 5/
Disinformation from Russia. Trump’s HHS is already working on campaigns but their good works are almost always drowned out by a Trump tweet which reaches far more people. So how does Biden fix this? 6/
Experts say he needs to think bigger than HHS. Get the commerce and state department involved. Get the churches involved. Lead with trusted scientists. Spend prodigiously but in a targeted way to reach specific communities. 7/
Biden appears to understand the magnitude of the problem but has so far been fairly vague on how he’ll fix it. To be fair - one president at a time - but most experts believe time is of the essence.
