Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden said Thursday that while he prays for a coronavirus vaccine to be released "tomorrow," he is concerned that President Donald Trump is putting too much pressure on scientists and that a quick vaccine will not be trusted if it's not proven to work.
"I pray to God, and I really mean this, the bottom of my heart, if we have a vaccine proven to work, that would be wonderful," Biden told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. "But I will tell you what, using pressure on our scientists to change their opinion or loosen up what they really think is a big mistake, and it undercuts everything about it."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week changed its guidelines for testing, now saying asymptomatic people who have been exposed to coronavirus need not be tested. The guidelines have met with concerns from experts about the spread of the virus from asymptomatic people, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was undergoing surgery when the CDC's announcement was made.
The White House has insisted it did not intervene with the CDC's decision but said there had been consultation.
"Have you ever seen any administration put so much pressure on the FDA?" Biden said. "There's no bounds to what this guy does and his team does. We should listen to the scientists."
He added that as early as January, he laid out a plan for proceeding with the pandemic, and noted that Columbia Medical School said several months ago that had Trump acted one week earlier, "there would be 30,000 people that would not have died."
However, Biden said he's concerned that a vaccine will be rushed out before Election Day, and that it must be tested.
"They have to do the protocols that are needed to be done to be able to say to the American public and release all the data to the scientific community saying this is what we did, this is why we think it will work," said Biden. "I pray to God that would happen tomorrow. That would be wonderful. That's much more important than the election, saving tens of thousands of lives."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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