Pres. Trump: 'You wouldn't have had a vaccine for another four years if it wasn't for me'
WASHINGTON (SBG) - A frustrated White House press corps shouted questions at President Donald Trump as he left the briefing room without answering any of them.
Though during an announcement on drug prices, he did still find time to declare himself the winner of the election.
“Big Pharma ran millions of dollars of negative advertisements against me during the campaign, which I won, by the way,” Trump said. "But, you know, you’ll find that out — almost 74 million votes."“We had Big Pharma against us. We had the media against us. We had big tech against us. We had a lot of dishonesty against us," Trump continued.
He was there to highlight two new regulatory actions making prescription drugs more affordable and in line with what some other countries pay.
But that was overshadowed by much bigger medical news: that Pfizer on Friday filed for emergency use of its coronavirus vaccine, said to be 95 percent effective.
You wouldn’t have had a vaccine for another four years if it wasn’t for me," Trump said.
Just before the news conference, we asked Health Secretary Alex Azar today about its distribution and potential to help people.
"We believe by the end of the year, we’ll have enough to vaccinate our most vulnerable," Azar said. "By end of January, most of our health care workers and first responders, and then the production lines keep on churning out vaccines in the tens and tens of millions of doses every month, and we’ll just progressively make that available.”
But the administration has still not collaborated with President-Elect Biden’s team on how to best protect Americans as the pandemic surges. Trump’s refusal to concede, many say, is costing lives —including Biden.
"More people may die if we don’t coordinate," he said. But Azar says that argument is "absolutely not fair".
Azar also said an advisory board will examine Pfizer’s research in the coming week or two, and if they approve, millions of doses could be shipped out just 24 hours later with other companies’ vaccines not far behind.
