Fox News medical contributor tells 'Fox & Friends' he thinks US could have vaccine 'approved by now' as HHS Secretary Azar says distribution could come in days.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Election disputes
Steve
Steve, thank you.
Hhs Secretary Alex Azar, offering
a positive outlook on the
rollout of the Pfizer
coronavirus vaccine.
Listen
if the panel approves on
December tenth. How soon might the
vaccine be out for people
really within days Chris,
within twenty four hours of FDA, green
lighting with authorization we
will ship to all of the states
and territories that we work
with and within hours they can
be vaccinating
Steve that sounds good here to
discuss is Fox NEWS, medical
contributor and author of that
book, Covid, police, cars of fear
and the power of science,
Dr Marc Siegel,
Hi Steve. How are you today
Steve im, good
we heard from Pfizer. This was
ninety percent effective over a month ago,
whats taking the government so
long warp speed, not so warp
speedy.
Well, its been slowed down
at the FDA level.
Im concerned about that Steve.
The data safety monitoring Board
on the Pfizer vaccine, for
example, has been looking at the
data all along
the FDA is saying: okay. Now they
have to sit down and go over
this one sitting, and then it
will be approved.
Obviously, by the end of this
week
there is no question about it,
but in the United Kingdom
they approved it faster because
they paid attention to that
drips and drabs of data come in.
I think we could have had this
approved by now
Steve. Let me ask you this as
well:
one hundred million votes probably going
to be fifty million.
I read this morning. It might be
forty million.
They say there are bottlenecks
with production and supply chain
things,
but you know what, in the
average person who needs it,
doesnt care about that
hurry.
Yeah
Steve!
I agree with you on that.
I want to point out something:
I look glass, half full,
because when you talk about the
cold chain with the Pfizer
vaccine, it has got to be kept
below zero and got to be on dry
ice
Steve. Absolutely
so you have the military
involved and Mckesson involved
with syringes and needles
and then have you Pfizer itself
involved.
Then you have a computer
program,
so I think if Pfizer manages to
distribute twenty million, if
twenty million people end up getting
the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine by
the end of the year and live in
nursing homes and healthcare
workers, we have done good for
the month of December,
Steve gotten it to the market
this quickly. We need to widely
distributed
its tough to inknock. Could you
late a whole population,
something that happened at
midnight last night Mark
California issued their
stay at home orders taking
effect where, essentially, the
governor has divided the state
into five parts?
If you are hospital, Icu capacity
drops below fifteen percent. You are on that
lockdown thing
right now. They have locked down
l, DOT, a county and huge portions of
southern California. When you
look at these lockdowns weigh
the cost of business
interruption versus the impact
in slowing the spread.
Well. Im very concerned
about that.
You just leader, Charles Payne, on
that very eloquent, little and
passionately
lets not forget the California
attorney general is about to
become the head of the health
and human services.
Im very concerned about the
math here and about the way
politicians make these decisions
we found out recently outdoor
restaurants in l, DOT A have almost
no cases linked to them, and yet
they get shut down
the tremendous cost here,
a study that came out of Japan
by the way where they actually
have not locked down Japan
get this just because of all
the businesses closing Steve.
In the month of October, there
were more suicides in Japan than
the people died from the
pandemic from March all the way
to October
the amount of damage in terms of
depression, anxiety. All of the
other medical problems is huge.
Transcript generated on 2020-12-07.