Thread by @DrEricDing

2x HUGE—

📌Joint pledge by pharma vaccine makers that they will not release any #COVID19 vaccines that do not follow rigorous efficacy & safety standards.

📌Senior FDA scientists also pledge not to rush approve vaccine under political pressure! Hopeful.
nytimes.com/2020/09/04/us/…

2) The companies’ joint statement was planned for early next week, but it may be released before then after its existence was made public by WSJ. The manufacturers that are said to have signed the letter include Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi.

3) Senior regulators at the Food and Drug Administration have been discussing making their own joint public statement about the need to rely on proven science, according to two senior administration officials, a move that would breach their usual reticence as civil servants.

4) “Three companies — Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca — are testing their candidates in late-stage clinical trials. Pfizer CEO said this week that they could see results as early as October, but the others have said only that they plan to release a vaccine by the end of the year.

5) “Public health experts have applauded the companies’ rapid development of a vaccine, and early results have been promising. But in recent weeks, they have grown worried as Trump & his allies have begun talking about a vaccine that could be ready before the election on Nov. 3.”

6) “In tweets and public comments, Mr. Trump has explicitly tied his re-election fortunes to a vaccine, an idea detailed last week at RNC , where promotional videos featured the administration’s efforts to fund and develop one in its crash program called Operation Warp Speed.”

7) “Trump campaign advisers have privately called a pre-election vaccine “the holy grail.”
Also last week, the CDC sent letters to public health agencies around the country asking them to prepare for the possibility that a vaccine could be ready by late October or early November.

8) on Friday though, Mr. Trump said one would “probably” be ready in October. Even pharma can’t see results while the trials are underway, yet Trump said “You are going to see results that are shockingly good.”

9) Just the day before, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the top scientist on Operation Warp Speed, warned in an interview with National Public Radio that the chance of successful vaccine results by October was “very, very low.”

10) ➡️Several top health officials have made it explicit in recent weeks that they would rather quit than be co-opted by the White House in approving a vaccine.

11) Dr. Slaoui told Science on Thursday that he would “immediately resign if there is undue interference in this process,” though he said there had been none so far. Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the F.D.A. division that approves new vaccines and treatments, made the same pledge.

12) BOTTOMLINE—hopeful on pledges. But given every crazy batshit unprecedented thing Trump has done, I’m worried.

right now—my political & public health instincts: Trump just might trigger a Nixon-era Saturday Night Massacre to force this vaccine in Oct. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_…

13) For those not familiar with the Watergate scandal—Nixon tried fo order the Attorney General fire the special prosecutor Archibald Cox; AG Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox...

14) Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned. Nixon then ordered the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork did it but threatened to resign afterwards. This all happened in one night in October 1973.

15) I just pray and hope this vaccine thing doesn’t come to that. But with Trump you never know.