The country’s first COVID-19 vaccinations were administered on Monday. The year still has 17 days left in it. Which is a roundabout way of saying that Donald Trump’s prediction that we would have a vaccine before year’s end has proved to be accurate.
In May, he tweeted:
Good numbers coming out of States that are opening. America is getting its life back! Vaccine work is looking VERY promising, before end of year. Likewise, other solutions!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2020
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Typically, the media pooh-poohed Trump’s forecast while chanting the mantra “Science, science, science.” NBC News got the ball rolling with a “fact check” (they actually called it that) that claimed the president would “need a miracle” for a vaccine to be ready before the new year:
President Donald Trump has suggested multiple times that a coronavirus vaccine could come within months, an accelerated timeline that prominent health experts and veteran vaccine developers say is unlikely absent a miracle. … [E]xperts say that the development, testing and production of a vaccine for the public is still at least 12 to 18 months off. …
NPR joined the chorus of naysayers with a column quoting an FDA adviser, who said the timeline was “not realistic.” MSNBC, for its part, managed to find an expert who said the idea of a vaccine by January is “preposterous.
There were others:
— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) December 12, 2020
And still others:
They still think we should take them seriously pic.twitter.com/vM5IurHB9Z
— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) December 12, 2020
A special shout-out however goes to NBC News, which “fact-checked” Trump on his vaccine prediction a second time in August, following the president’s claim in his GOP convention speech that “we are delivering lifesaving therapies, and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner.”
“This is largely false,” NBC wrote.
What I want to know now is where are all the media reports fact-checking their own reports on the COVID-19 vaccine?
Cross posted at the Mental Recession
