Trump says coronavirus vaccine could be ready in a month
Wednesday September 16, 2020
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that a coronavirus vaccine may be available within a month -- an acceleration of even his own optimistic predictions -- but added that the pandemic could go away by itself.<br>"We're very close to having a vaccine," he told a town hall question-and-answer session with voters in Pennsylvania aired on ABC News.<br>"We're within weeks of getting it you know -- could be three weeks, four weeks," he said.<br>Only hours earlier, speaking to Fox News, Trump had said a vaccine could come in "four weeks, it could be eight weeks."<br>Democrats have expressed concern that Trump is putting political pressure on government health regulators and scientists to approve a rushed vaccine in time to help turn around his uphill bid for reelection against challenger Joe Biden on November 3.<br>Experts including top US government infectious diseases doctor Anthony Fauci say vaccine approval is more likely toward the end of the year.<br>At the ABC town hall Trump was asked why he'd downplayed the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has now killed close to 200,000 people in the US.<br>Trump replied by saying: "I didn't downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it in terms of action."<br>But Trump himself told journalist Bob Woodward during taped interviews for the new book "Rage" -- published Tuesday -- that he had deliberately decided to "play it down" to avoid alarming Americans.<br>- 'Herd mentality' -<br>Returning to one of his most controversial views on the virus, that has ravaged the economy and which government scientists say will remain a danger for some time, Trump insisted "it is going to disappear.""It would go away without the vaccine but it's going to go away a lot faster with it," he said.<br>Challenged about how the virus would go away by itself, he said "you'll develop like a herd mentality," apparently meaning the concept of herd immunity, when enough people have developed resistance to the disease to effectively stop transmission.<br>"It's going to be herd developed and that's going to happen. That will all happen but with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly. But I really believe we're rounding the corner," he said.<br>The president, who is rarely seen wearing a mask in public and long refused to push Americans to adopt the habit, said "a lot of people don't want to wear masks and people don't think masks are good."<br>Asked what people he meant, Trump answered: "Waiters."<br>"They come over and they serve you and they have a mask," he said. "I saw it the other day when they were serving me and they're playing with the mask. I'm not blaming them. I'm just saying what happens: They're playing with the mask. So the mask is over, and they're touching it, and then they're touching the plate, and that can't be good."<br>Polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the health crisis.<br>The latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Tracking poll Tuesday found that 52 percent of adults do not trust Trump's statements about an upcoming coronavirus vaccine, compared to 26 percent who do.<br clear="all">
