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> It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this was For some of us, it's a challenge to disentangle the achievements from the politics (e.g

> It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this was For some of us, it's a challenge to disentangle the achievements from the politics (e.g. "I hate Trump, so I refuse to believe his administration did anything of note"). But the world isn't a comforting black & white; instead, it's nuanced shades of gray. Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them.

tomohawk 5y ago
Exactly. This could easily have become the next boondogle, akin to Solyndra. The fact that it didn't, and achieved such a good result is a rarity.
- Aloha 5y ago
  I would rather government take reasonable risks, and end up with occasional Solyndra's if thats the price for increased innovation. To be honest, I don't consider the half a billion dollars from Solyndra to be much of a boondoggle, in the grand scheme of things. It's a loan guarantee that had intentional fraud by the borrower.
- tootie 5y ago
  Solyndra was inconsequential. And it was part of a package of knowingly risky bets that was overall very successful. Warp Speed was the same. They invested in lots of vaccine trials with the expectation that some would fail and they would absorb the cost. There were a lot of manufacturing miscues and money that was misspent but that was all baked into the program expectations. Same with the clean energy funding of which Solyndra took part.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  The same program that invested in Solyndra also gave Tesla grants that prevented it's bankruptcy
KerrAvon 5y ago
For some of us, the actual challenge is that all of Trump’s people lie at the drop of a hat. He hires for loyalty, not competence, and that means lying whenever necessary for his ego, and that means you’re talking to people who have no shame. How can we trust that any of this happened the way that they say it did? Isn’t this just amother puff piece to pump Jared and the other incompetent losers in Trumpworld up? Since they were also spectacularly incompetent at getting jabs into arms — Biden had to pick up the pieces on distribution — why do they deserve the benefit of the doubt?
- schnable 5y ago
  What policies did Biden change around distribution?
xg15 5y ago
> But the world isn't a comforting black & white; instead, it's nuanced shades of gray. And that sentence is a comfortable cliche that invites one to stop thinking about the matter any further. Often, if you have a "shades of gray" situation, I think it's more interesting to examine the seeming contradictions and try to find out where exactly your intuition went wrong. In this case, how did a chaotic organisation like the Trump administration, headed by someone with a history of scam and fraud, manage to pull this off? ...or you could just say "world is complicated" and be done with it.
tootie 5y ago
I think it's a very easily defensible belief that the Trump admin did an absolutely terrible job at nearly every turn when it came to the covid response. In the case of Operation Warp Speed they were brought a fully-baked idea and approved it. That was a good call. They also undercut medical experts, pushed unproven and dangerous treatment ideas, downplayed the danger even when they knew better and killed Herman Cain.
- 0xy 5y ago
  The Trump admin closed the borders with China in late January and was accused of being racist and exaggerating the risk by news media and the Democrats. In fact, they're the only people who took it seriously at all. Then OWS was partly responsible for shipping vaccines in record time while the media said it was impossible to do. As for undercutting experts, the current Vice President literally said she wouldn't take the vaccine, implying it couldn't be trusted because Trump was engaged in the rollout [1] while the current President said the vaccine was rushed and that people shouldn't trust it. [2] Numerous "experts" threw FUD at the vaccines, calling them rushed repeatedly. [3] Dr Fauci himself said a vaccine's approval was "rushed" by regulators in some markets. [4] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/biden-trump-coronavirus-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/biden-trump-c... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/us/politics/coronavirus-v... [4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fauci-says-uk-rushed-covid-vaccine-approval/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fauci-says-uk-rushed-covid-vacc...
  - tootie 5y ago
    None of this is true. Biden and Harris both said they feared political interference in the approval process and would not trust Trump's assurances. That's evident from your own links. That's entirely justified by his constant lies about almost everything but especially covid. They both explicitly endorsed approvals from the medical experts. He was never branded as racist over the travel restrictions, but rather over his overt racism. Things like derisively calling it the Wuhan Flu. Trump, in fact, is the one who lied about Biden's criticism. https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_8df18b2a-26ab-4d33-ba13-2c4a4e45b23c https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_8df18b2a-2... And Fauci was clearly expressing surprise at British regulatory process, not casting any doubt on the vaccine efficacy since Fauci had already endorsed the vaccines in question. Here's a pretty thorough breakdown of the dozens of explicit lies Trump told specifically about covid and covid policy up until election day https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-...
wolverine876 5y ago
> For some of us, it's a challenge to disentangle the achievements from the politics Who are you attributing this to? It's a cheap way to delegitimize people who disagree by making general derogatory statements about nobody in particular. > Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them. If that's what happened.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them. While I wholeheartedly applaud this amazing achievement of technology, I think that it's an open question as to if this was a political "noteworthy achievement" that differentiates the previous US administration from any other past, future or hypothetical alternate administration. i.e. Yes, they signed off on "operation warp-speed", but who wouldn't? Isn't this the bare minimum, easy decision that any administration would affirm? It's throwing money at big private company, and that is how the US government under any administration likes to tackle big problems, rather than than the messy details and "big-government" stigma of co-ordinating a response in house? In normal times, there is the potential for reputational damage from a Solyndra-style failure, but this was clearly not normal times.
- wbl 5y ago
  Given that at the time the democrats opposed speeding the approvals, Newsom said CA would do its own analysis, etc I think it's fair to say this wasn't the obvious choice. We still underspent especially on manufacturing leading to the winter of 2020-2021 with very little administered.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  > Yes, they signed off on "operation warp-speed", but who wouldn't? Around 200 other countries did not!
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    There aren't 200 countries with the resources that the USA has to spend on it. Other powers with large economies also spent a lot - notably, Germany funded the development of Pfizer's COVID vaccine, and the UK funded the Oxford-AZ vaccine. So, it would not be accurate to say that "operation warp-speed" was unique.

tomohawk 5y ago

Exactly. This could easily have become the next boondogle, akin to Solyndra. The fact that it didn't, and achieved such a good result is a rarity.

Aloha 5y ago
I would rather government take reasonable risks, and end up with occasional Solyndra's if thats the price for increased innovation. To be honest, I don't consider the half a billion dollars from Solyndra to be much of a boondoggle, in the grand scheme of things. It's a loan guarantee that had intentional fraud by the borrower.
tootie 5y ago
Solyndra was inconsequential. And it was part of a package of knowingly risky bets that was overall very successful. Warp Speed was the same. They invested in lots of vaccine trials with the expectation that some would fail and they would absorb the cost. There were a lot of manufacturing miscues and money that was misspent but that was all baked into the program expectations. Same with the clean energy funding of which Solyndra took part.
throwaway6734 5y ago
The same program that invested in Solyndra also gave Tesla grants that prevented it's bankruptcy

KerrAvon 5y ago

For some of us, the actual challenge is that all of Trump’s people lie at the drop of a hat. He hires for loyalty, not competence, and that means lying whenever necessary for his ego, and that means you’re talking to people who have no shame. How can we trust that any of this happened the way that they say it did? Isn’t this just amother puff piece to pump Jared and the other incompetent losers in Trumpworld up? Since they were also spectacularly incompetent at getting jabs into arms — Biden had to pick up the pieces on distribution — why do they deserve the benefit of the doubt?

schnable 5y ago
What policies did Biden change around distribution?

xg15 5y ago

> But the world isn't a comforting black & white; instead, it's nuanced shades of gray. And that sentence is a comfortable cliche that invites one to stop thinking about the matter any further. Often, if you have a "shades of gray" situation, I think it's more interesting to examine the seeming contradictions and try to find out where exactly your intuition went wrong. In this case, how did a chaotic organisation like the Trump administration, headed by someone with a history of scam and fraud, manage to pull this off? ...or you could just say "world is complicated" and be done with it.

tootie 5y ago

I think it's a very easily defensible belief that the Trump admin did an absolutely terrible job at nearly every turn when it came to the covid response. In the case of Operation Warp Speed they were brought a fully-baked idea and approved it. That was a good call. They also undercut medical experts, pushed unproven and dangerous treatment ideas, downplayed the danger even when they knew better and killed Herman Cain.

0xy 5y ago
The Trump admin closed the borders with China in late January and was accused of being racist and exaggerating the risk by news media and the Democrats. In fact, they're the only people who took it seriously at all. Then OWS was partly responsible for shipping vaccines in record time while the media said it was impossible to do. As for undercutting experts, the current Vice President literally said she wouldn't take the vaccine, implying it couldn't be trusted because Trump was engaged in the rollout [1] while the current President said the vaccine was rushed and that people shouldn't trust it. [2] Numerous "experts" threw FUD at the vaccines, calling them rushed repeatedly. [3] Dr Fauci himself said a vaccine's approval was "rushed" by regulators in some markets. [4] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/biden-trump-coronavirus-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/biden-trump-c... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/us/politics/coronavirus-v... [4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fauci-says-uk-rushed-covid-vaccine-approval/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fauci-says-uk-rushed-covid-vacc...
- tootie 5y ago
  None of this is true. Biden and Harris both said they feared political interference in the approval process and would not trust Trump's assurances. That's evident from your own links. That's entirely justified by his constant lies about almost everything but especially covid. They both explicitly endorsed approvals from the medical experts. He was never branded as racist over the travel restrictions, but rather over his overt racism. Things like derisively calling it the Wuhan Flu. Trump, in fact, is the one who lied about Biden's criticism. https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_8df18b2a-26ab-4d33-ba13-2c4a4e45b23c https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_8df18b2a-2... And Fauci was clearly expressing surprise at British regulatory process, not casting any doubt on the vaccine efficacy since Fauci had already endorsed the vaccines in question. Here's a pretty thorough breakdown of the dozens of explicit lies Trump told specifically about covid and covid policy up until election day https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-...

wolverine876 5y ago

> For some of us, it's a challenge to disentangle the achievements from the politics Who are you attributing this to? It's a cheap way to delegitimize people who disagree by making general derogatory statements about nobody in particular. > Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them. If that's what happened.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

> Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them. While I wholeheartedly applaud this amazing achievement of technology, I think that it's an open question as to if this was a political "noteworthy achievement" that differentiates the previous US administration from any other past, future or hypothetical alternate administration. i.e. Yes, they signed off on "operation warp-speed", but who wouldn't? Isn't this the bare minimum, easy decision that any administration would affirm? It's throwing money at big private company, and that is how the US government under any administration likes to tackle big problems, rather than than the messy details and "big-government" stigma of co-ordinating a response in house? In normal times, there is the potential for reputational damage from a Solyndra-style failure, but this was clearly not normal times.

wbl 5y ago
Given that at the time the democrats opposed speeding the approvals, Newsom said CA would do its own analysis, etc I think it's fair to say this wasn't the obvious choice. We still underspent especially on manufacturing leading to the winter of 2020-2021 with very little administered.
BurningFrog 5y ago
> Yes, they signed off on "operation warp-speed", but who wouldn't? Around 200 other countries did not!
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  There aren't 200 countries with the resources that the USA has to spend on it. Other powers with large economies also spent a lot - notably, Germany funded the development of Pfizer's COVID vaccine, and the UK funded the Oxford-AZ vaccine. So, it would not be accurate to say that "operation warp-speed" was unique.