19 March 2021

NOTE FROM NORM: America’s Greatest Generation

Today, the Biden Administration will celebrate 100 million coronavirus vaccinations in America.

For all of America that is, indeed, good news.

The Biden Administration should be given proper credit for this milestone.  It represents one of the most basic functions of government which is keeping its citizens safe.

As we reflect on this important and powerful event it is also important that we provide proper credit to the previous administration of Donald Trump for putting into motion the systems, and funding, that made it even possible.

“Operation Warpspeed” was launched on May 15, 20202 and was a public–private partnership created to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

As the Wall Street Journal writes in its March 2, 2021 editorial https://www.wsj.com/articles/operation-warp-speeds-triumph-11614728552 the credit for historic rapid development of vaccines to put the world back on its axis belongs to the Trump Administration and the pharmaceutical companies that put in the work and effort to bring us to this moment.

It’s important to remember that before Democrats and the Biden Administration felt it necessary to denigrate the accomplishments of the previous administration, it was Democrats and a current member of the Biden Administration who nearly derailed it.

As the Wall Street Journal writes “It’s important to appreciate what an achievement this is. Critics scoffed when President Trump set a target of having a vaccine approved by the end of 2020, and Kamala Harris suggested she might not take a shot recommended by the Trump Administration.”

Even after they took office the Biden Administration attempted to claim that the reason that vaccines were not getting in the arms of Americans was because of a lack of supply.

Not true.

As the paper further writes, “The Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed also contracted most of the vaccine supply for production before approval by the FDA: 200 million doses each of Pfizer and Moderna, and 100 million of J&J. No one knew which technology would be approved first, if at all, so the government wisely bet on several. This was the best money the feds spent in the pandemic. Mr. Biden ought to give the vaccine credit where it is due—to U.S. drug companies and Operation Warp Speed. “

The initial problems with the roll-out of the vaccine wasn’t supply, or even demand, it was leadership or, in some cases, the lack of it.

Several states made it nearly impossible for those vulnerable populations who needed the vaccine the fastest to figure out how to get it.

But that’s water under the bridge now and the history of these moments will be written by future generations.

Here’s what matters now, more than anything else.

Soon there will be vaccines for every American who wishes to have one.  It would be my hope that every American who can get access to a shot will do so.

As President Trump, who has been vaccinated, said recently when asked about getting vaccinated, “I would recommend it and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly….it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine, and it is something that works.”

We live in a nation that is filled with abundance.  While we have challenges and problems, we also have opportunity that we too often forget that comes with an exceptional nation.

American initiative, know-how and innovation, along with available national resources, helped to create, in record time, vaccines that will help end a global pandemic.

There’s enough blame to go around for what went wrong over the course of the past year of our war with COVID-19.

But there’s also plenty of credit that should be rightly shared for helping to bring this virus to heel.

Most of all, though, we should recognize that we live among America’s next “Greatest Generation.”

They are the men and women in America’s frontlines who protected and cared for Americans during the beginning of this pandemic and continue to do so today.

They are the people worked in the laboratories, the scientists, the laborers, the truckdrivers, the pilots and countless others who ideated, developed, created, produced, and delivered vaccines to the arms of the American people.

And the American people whose tax dollars and sacrifice over the past year put us on the road to salvation during a time of darkness and despair.

The Greatest Generation has defended and protected America before.

The next Greatest Generation has done so again.