A Pfizer exec admitted that Pfizer put its vaccine trial on ice from late Oct. to day after election: https://t.co/YOnzS3eX5s "... if Pfizer had held to the original plan, the data would likely have been available in October, as its CEO, Albert Bourla, had initially predicted."
statnews.com/2020/11/09/cov…
One of the most extraordinary facts about the 2020 election: that Trump was likely denied his hoped-for October Surprise of a near-miraculous breakthrough in vaccines because Pfizer shut down work on the world's most important clinical trial until the day after the election.
Virtually no Trump supporters are aware of how Trump was denied his October (or November 2, 2020) Surprise of a colossal breakthrough in vaccines because they lean instead toward lowbrow anti-vaxx thinking.
Here's my November 11, 2020 column explaining in detail how Trump was denied his October Surprise (or, most likely, Monday, November 2, 2020 Surprise) of an announcement that the Pfizer vaccine had achieved spectacular efficacy:
takimag.com/article/the-ne…
If Pfizer had not shut down processing of its vaccine clinical trial from late October until the day after the election (11/4), but instead announced its sensational success on Monday morning 11/2/20 instead of on 11/9/20, what would have been the effect on the election?
If Trump's November Vaccine Surprise had flipped 45,000 votes from Biden to Trump in the three closest states, the Electoral College would have been tied 269-269. The House then would have voted with each state delegation getting one vote, which would have favored the GOP.
As for what would have actually happened if the Electoral College had been tied at 269-269, who knows? The pressure (slander, threats, bribes, etc) from The Establishment on individual Republican congressmen to defect and put Biden in the White House would have been colossal.
It would be interesting to know the full extent of the pressure that Pfizer felt that led them to take the extraordinary step of pausing the world's most important clinical trial from late October until the day after the election.
As to why virtually nobody knows that Pfizer put its vaccine clinical trial on hold until the day after the election, one reason is simply that it takes some effort to understand how clinical trials are supposed to work. I did my best to explain it here:
takimag.com/article/the-ne…
Pfizer's published vaccine clinical trial protocol was to unblind after the first 32 cases of covid among its volunteers. If no, statistically significant difference between unblinded vaccine and placebo arms, then unblind after 62 cases. If still none, unblind after 92.
Instead, Pfizer stopped counting how many covid cases there had been among its volunteers in late October, resuming the day after the election. The next Monday it announced 94 cases, more than even its planned third checkpoint, overwhelmingly concentrated in the placebo arm.
On Sunday, November 1, 2020, the New York Times gloated that Trump's hoped-for October Surprise of a vaccine had not come:
nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/…
Yet, on November 1, 2020, Pfizer had enough covid cases from its vaccine clinical trial volunteers to show its vaccine's statistically significant efficacy. But Pfizer had shut down counting cases, putting samples in cold storage, & didn't restart until the day after election.
What would have happened if Pfizer had not delayed, but instead announced its vaccine's remarkable efficacy a week earlier, on 11/2/20? If Trump had won due to the the success of his vaccine promotion strategy, would Massachusetts be the center of vaccine skepticism today?
Here's Pfizer's stock price last Oct-Nov: it dropped sharply upon the October 27 earnings call, when analysts had expected clinical trial data to be announced, then boomed with the delayed announcement finally on November 9. Some people lost money due to Pfizer's delay:
Pfizer had published for investors its vaccine clinical trial protocol https://t.co/kq8JsHP4R8 of how it would unblind results when it had 32, then, if need be, 62, then 92 covid cases among volunteers. Under pressure from Dems like Zeke Emanuel, it stopped counting in Oct.
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But Pfizer chose secretly not to follow its published protocol for when it would unblind its vaccine clinical trial results, but instead stopped counting covid cases, apparently so it wouldn't technically know that it was supposed to announce results to investors.
The 2020 election was extremely close in the Electoral College. If 0.16% of voters had flipped from Biden to Trump due to the on-time announcement of the success of Trump's pro-vaccine strategy, Trump would have carried PA, GA, and AZ and won 273-265.
