Twice in recent days, former president Donald Trump has spoken out more aggressively about the value of vaccines. Reluctance to get the shot still grips millions of Americans, and Mr. Trump’s public comments might help persuade the holdouts among his followers, many of whom are suspicious of evidence that the coronavirus vaccines are safe and effective.
Last Sunday night in Dallas, during the final stop of a live interview show with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Trump said he had gotten a booster. The audience booed him. “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, waving off their reaction with his hand. In an interview published Dec. 22 with conservative Daily Wire host Candace Owens, who is a leading purveyor of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, Mr. Trump took credit for the vaccines as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.” He added, “Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form” of covid. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”
MR. TRUMP can justly claim credit for having launched Operation Warp Speed, the successful crash effort to develop and manufacture the coronavirus vaccines. His latest comments properly drew nods of approval from President Biden and the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki.
We should not forget Mr. Trump’s disastrous 2020 response to the pandemic, from his denial that the virus would spread, to his support for useless drugs, to his calls to “liberate” states from lockdowns and his destructive political meddling in public health agencies. The Dec. 17 year-end staff report of the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, chaired by Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) documents some of Mr. Trump’s “critical failures.” These include his embrace of Scott Atlas, the Hoover Institution neuroradiologist and Fox News commentator who, before vaccines, argued that viral spread would create “herd immunity,” and who was against lockdowns and other restrictions.
The panel released a revealing email from Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, on Aug. 25, 2020, refusing to attend a White House roundtable organized by Dr. Atlas. “I can’t be part of this with these people who believe in herd immunity and believe we are fine with only protecting the 1.5M Americans in LTCF [long-term care facilities] and not the 80M+ with comorbidities,” Dr. Birx wrote, warning of hundreds of thousands more deaths if mitigations such as masks and social distancing were not advanced. Of the Atlas group, she wrote, “They are a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience.”
They were also advising the president of the United States, whose response to the pandemic was marked by deception and personal irresponsibility, including testing positive three days before a presidential debate and not saying so, carrying on his campaign and schedule, and endangering all those with whom he came in contact. Adding his voice to the drive to assure Americans get vaccinated — and specifically targeting many of his reluctant supporters — will not erase the record, but it is overdue and welcome.
