Analysis: Eric Trump may not get the whole vaccine thing
Eric Trump: “Yes. Listen, that first day he got hit hard, first day Friday. And I can tell you as son, it’s never fun watching your father fly off to Walter Reed on Marine One, right? I mean, that’s something that — it’s a day that no son wants to, again, remember. It’s — that’s no fun to watch.
“But I’m telling you I spoke to him three times that next Saturday. The guy sounded 100%. It was amazing. It actually probably goes to speak to how good some of these vaccines that are being created are and what my father’s done on the vaccine front, no one could have done. No one could have done.
“I mean, literally, Biden was calling my father xenophobic for shutting down America from travel to China — I mean, and the virus came from China. My father, literally, started day one creating this vaccine. He worked to push this vaccine. And now my father just took it. And you see how well he got over it —
Jonathan Karl: Wait, wait. Can you —
Trump: — an inspiration. I think — as Americans, Jon, we should be very proud of that.
Karl: Can you clarify that? You said your father just took a vaccine?
Trump: Meaning when he was in Walter Reed, the medicines that he was taking.
Karl: The therapeutics?
Trump: — he felt horrible. And on Saturday — again, I spoke to the man three times on Saturday and he sounded tremendous. And I think it goes to show the power of medicine in this country and how far that we’ve come on Covid in the last six, seven months.
Holy cow! There’s a vaccine for Covid-19? This is great news!
Or, well, no. See, either Eric Trump let the biggest cat out of the bag ever — that the President was given a “vaccine” for Covid-19 — or he is simply confused about the difference between medicines designed to help mitigate the course of the virus and an actual vaccine.
(HINT: It’s the latter.)
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See, we know that the President received several therapeutics designed to help him deal with the virus. Those included the anti-viral drug remdesivir, a steroid known as dexamethasone and experimental antibody cocktail produced by the pharmaceutical company Regeneron.
He was not, as far as we know, administered a “vaccine” of any sort. Even if he had been, vaccines are meant to keep someone from getting sick, not help you once you are sick. (The flu shot, for example, is given as a preventative, not as a treatment.)
Trump can call it whatever he likes. But the reality is that we do not yet have a vaccine — much less a cure.
And once we do have a vaccine, which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said recently could be as soon as November or December, it will be months before we get anything close to the necessary number of people vaccinated to return to some semblance of normal.
The problem is that (lots and lots) of people listen more to Donald and Eric Trump than to Dr. Fauci. Which puts the onus on the President and his son to be very clear — and careful — with their words. Which, of course, they are not.
