Pfizer’s decision had far-reaching effects. On a political level, you’ll have to confer with Nate Silver on whether the Pfizer news would have been enough to swing 100,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 30,000 votes in Wisconsin, and 20,000 votes in Georgia and put Donald Trump back in the White House. On a pandemic level, imagine how the Pfizer vaccine would have been received if its announcement had coincided with the election and helped usher in a Donald Trump victory. We might all be calling it the Trump vaccine, rushed out by big pharma in the closing days of the election, the ultimate November bombshell, not to be trusted under any circumstances by those who follow the science. What’s truly crazy is that a few pharma executives, unaccountable to both the public and their shareholders, got to make this crucial decision, and that they got away with it without a hint of a congressional subpoena.
