Trump Administration Had Vaccine Distribution Plan
The Claim
There was no COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan under Trump.
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Emerging story
On January 21, 2021, CNN Political White House Correspondent MJ Lee tweeted that sources told CNN there simply was no vaccine distribution plan under Trump, leaving Biden and his team having to essentially start from "square one."
The tweet contained a link to the CNN article and quickly received almost 5K retweets. There were many responses to this tweet that were critical of the Trump administration, with one user claiming that “The ONLY Covid plan the Trump administration had was a PR plan!”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found this claim to be fake. The Trump administration did have a plan for distributing the vaccine and it was called Operation Warp Speed. On the U.S. Department of Defense website, there is an infographic that explains the distribution plan.
According to the CNN article that MJ Lee tweeted, in a White House press briefing Thursday afternoon, Dr. Anthony Fauci rejected the suggestion that the Biden administration would have to build a distribution plan from scratch. He said, “We're certainly not starting from scratch, because there is activity going on in the distribution," adding that the Biden administration is "amplifying" in significant ways existing vaccine distribution efforts.
According to TIME, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams says roughly 700,000 people are getting vaccinated every single day. There is a distribution plan, which states control, and who gets vaccinated is based on recommendations from the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The problem is there are not enough doses yet. The slow rollout in the United States has raised questions about how fast they can actually vaccinate the public. It seems that the comments by the sources in the CNN article meant that the Trump administration’s vaccine distribution plan wasn’t very good, rather than it being non-existent.
On Thursday, Biden unveiled his national coronavirus strategy which included a goal of administering 100 million vaccinations during his first 100 days in office.
