Follow-up question: Would Donald Trump trust a vaccine if Putin told him it was safe?
Never underestimate the willingness of powerful people to engage in some geopolitical propaganda. That’s why
Putin sent PPE to New York this spring, even as the virus took hold in his own country.
Russia’s the country
that reported very few cases of Covid, before the outbreak became impossible to deny. It’s the country where doctors critical of the government’s response
fall out of windows.
Transparency concerns matter here
Can you trust a Russian vaccine more than you can trust a Russian election result? The kind of electoral fraud that Trump frequently alleges, without evidence, happens in the US in fact does happen in Russia, according to democracy watchdogs.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: “Of course I wouldn’t take” Russian vaccine
Putin and
his interests are routinely supported by an unbelievable three quarters of voters. Three-quarters of Americans don’t agree on much of anything.
No American President has gotten much more than 60% of the popular vote ever,
in the elections where that’s been possible to track. Heck, in our weird system we routinely
give the White House to the person who got fewer votes. And everybody goes along with it.
Trump likes to joke about continuing to serve as President long into the future, but to do it, he’d have to change the US Constitution, which seems completely impossible. Not for Putin. Voters helped him change Russia’s constitution last month.
During his time in office, Trump has shown great deference to Putin. That could stem from Trump’s disdain for the US
intelligence community assessment that Russia tried to help his campaign in 2016 (and is trying to help him win again in 2020). The White House also likes to say he’s been hard on Russia, though there is ample evidence of Trump’s willingness to let Putin play alpha.
One example, of many, is his continued interest in bringing Putin back into the leadership group of industrial democracies. The G7 — it used to be the G8 —
kicked Russia out after Putin invaded Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine, in 2014.
Know what else the US intelligence community says Russia is doing? Last month the NSA, along with agencies from European countries, alleged Russians have been
trying steal coronavirus vaccine research by hacking into computer systems.
In Belarus, next to Russia, Putin has sparred with the longtime President, Alexander Lukashenko, who arrested Russian mercenaries who he said were trying to destabilize the country on the eve of their election. Lukashenko won, got congratulations from Putin, and is in the process of crushing dissident protests.
US health secretary: “The point is to have a vaccine that is safe,” not be first
The vaccine race is a competition
Russia’s announcement of a vaccine, whether you can believe it or not, must irk Trump. Just last week Trump said, contra the evidence in Western medicine, that there could be a vaccine by Election Day.
“I believe we’ll have the vaccine before the end of the year, certainly, but around that date, yes. I think so,” Trump said this past Thursday.
The real timeline, hopefully. But actual medical experts told CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen said that timeline is impossible.
“There’s no way. There’s just no way,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist at Baylor College of Medicine and a CNN medical analyst.
Read
this to understand the timeline. Even if everything goes exactly according to plan, the earliest we’re looking at is Inauguration Day. So late January.
How did Russia do this so fast? Here’s a key line from
CNN’s report on Putin’s announcement of the vaccine.
Critics say the country’s push for a vaccine is partly due to political pressure from the Kremlin, which is keen to portray Russia as a global scientific force.
CNN / Balkantimes.press
