FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver made a claim on Twitter that’s getting a lot of attention, quite understandably.
Silver made a comment on Twitter regarding a Politico piece about Trump’s push for fast-track approval of COVID vaccine. This makes sense, as you want it to be fast-tracked to make it available to people as soon possible.
Silver said, “‘Trump pushed for vaccine approvals too fast’ is the worst possible critique of the Trump administration’s COVID policy. It saved lots of lives. If anything approval should have been faster.”
He then said, “The barn burner.” He said that “liberal public health elites” pressured Pfizer to “change its original protocols” and delay that vaccine approval, which “had the convenient side-effect of delaying any vaccine announcement until after the election” That action “deserves more scrutiny,” Silver declared.
Also, the late 2020 push from liberal public health elites that persuaded Pfizer to *change* its original protocols – and had the convenient side-effect of delaying any vaccine announcement until after the election – deserves more scrutiny.https://t.co/1v3ueTNqur
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 24, 2022
President Donald Trump was thus denied the political “win” of the vaccine before the election.
Additional Silver noted that most public health officials “tend to be strong [Democratic] partisans” and that pushing Pfizer to slow-walk the approval “may have been politically motivated in whole or in part.” He said that it was a “story that deserves more reporting and I’ve done some poking around myself.”
It was something President Donald Trump, and other people have speculated about in the past. Pfizer denies that the delay was for political reasons.
Silver said, “There is direct evidence. Pfizer changed (delayed) its original protocols as a result of a pressure campaign and then published its results on literally the first possible working day after the election outcome was determined.” Silver then referenced another point, a letter from September 25, urging that “no trial results be published “through at least late November”.
People on the Left immediately fell upon Silver, inferring that he was spreading MAGA conspiracy.
But of course, we’ve seen a lot of efforts to hurt Trump that are far from a conspiracy, including the Clinton team’s involvement in the Steele dossier, which was then pushed to the FBI and used in an investigation against him for years. Even now, we see the Biden team’s involvement in the process that led to the FBI raid on Trump’s home. So, it’s not hard to believe at all.