Recall this moment in the late stages of the 2020 campaign? The headline at Fox after the vice-presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence was this:
Vice presidential debate: Kamala Harris claims she won’t take vaccine if Trump recommends
VP Pence slammed Harris for ‘undermining public confidence’ in a potential vaccine
Specifically, then-Senator Harris said that “if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I’m not taking it.”
To which Vice President Pence replied by saying this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
“The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine, if a vaccine emerges during the Trump administration, I think is unconscionable, and Senator, I just ask you to stop playing politics with peoples’ lives. The reality is that we will have a vaccine, we believe, before the end of this year, and it will have capacity to save countless American lives and your continuous undermining of confidence in a vaccine is just unacceptable.”
Now, of course, a year later Trump has long said to take the vaccine and, taking a cue from Harris, we do have millions who don’t trust the vaccine and refuse to get vaccinated. And this week there was this headline at Fox:
Pfizer CEO says people who spread COVID vaccine misinformation are ‘criminals’: ‘Cost millions of lives’
Pfizer CEO says people who spread vaccine misinformation ‘have literally cost millions of lives’
The Fox story reports this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
“The CEO of Pfizer said people who intentionally spread misinformation about coronavirus vaccines are ‘criminals.’
‘Those people are criminals,’ Pfizer’s Albert Bourla told Atlantic Council think tank CEO Frederick Kempe on Tuesday. ‘They’re not bad people. They’re criminals because they have literally cost millions of lives.’”
Wow. In other words, the CEO of Pfizer is saying exactly what Mike Pence said to Kamala Harris when she said she would not take a Trump-produced vaccine.
Compare Pence to Pfizer CEO Bourla:
Pence to Harris: “The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine, if a vaccine emerges during the Trump administration, I think is unconscionable, and Senator, I just ask you to stop playing politics with peoples’ lives……your continuous undermining of confidence in a vaccine is just unacceptable.”
Pfizer CEO Bourla: “Those people are criminals,” Pfizer’s Albert Bourla told Atlantic Council think tank CEO Frederick Kempe on Tuesday. “They’re not bad people. They’re criminals because they have literally cost millions of lives…..The only thing that stands between the new way of life and the current way of life is, frankly, hesitancy to vaccinations.”
Which is to say, in essence the CEO of Pfizer has just stepped in it big time, effectively labeling the current Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, as a “criminal” because, exactly as Mike Pence said to her, Harris’s condemnation of the vaccine, said to watching millions, paved the way for the anti-vaxxers of today.
Wow. Got it, Mr. Bourla. Duly noted. Message received.
