Trump is lying to America about the speed with which a vaccine can be developed—and doing it so you'll vote for him. The truth: 10 years is normal; 4 years, blindingly fast; 2 years, insane; 1 year, impossible; and for *months* any deployment will *only* be on an emergency basis.
What's happening is we're in the first 90 days of what'll be a 3- to 5-year pandemic—but since Trump needs our vote in 6 months, he pretends the 90 days *was* the pandemic. It wasn't—it was just a chance for America to see how many people Trump's incompetence can kill in 90 days.
If a miracle happens—a full-on *miracle*—by mid-2021, anyone in America in an *emergency* situation will be able to get a vaccine that went through the most irresponsibly quick testing process in modern history. That's the best-case scenario. And Trump can't sell that—so he lies.
Social media companies are already blocking COVID-19 disinformation—but *media* companies aren't. So they keep covering Trump's false claims about a COVID-19 vaccine—even though the news editors *know* the claims are disinformation and *know* they're being told just to win votes.
Any American who wants can search media to find interviews with experts. That's where the information in *this* thread comes from. But since most Americans don't want this to be our reality, many among us will accept Trump's lies because they're *comfort food*—and Trump knows it.
Trump has America strapped to a bed and is spoon-feeding it poison—daily. And when someone says to US media outlets, "Maybe you shouldn't let him in our living rooms to spoon-feed us poison?", media shrugs and says something that sounds like an adult from a Charlie Brown cartoon.
70% of a nation has to have taken a vaccine that is overwhelmingly effective—without serious side effects—for the process of truly containing a virus (without social distancing) to start. America has *no idea* how far we are from *any* of those conditions because of Trump's lies.
I'm not advocating for despair—only honesty. America can reinvent itself. We *can* evolve. But we can't go back to how things were—or, not for such a long time that by the time we get there the past will be irrelevant anyway—and we certainly can't do it under a pathological liar.
