![]() “This time it was supposed to be different… it still can be.”Īnd asked if he was disappointed by recent news of setbacks, the cabinet secretary who steered the project offered a response as enigmatic as the program itself. The recent news about distribution problems “just sucks,” said one health official. Many expressed frustration and disappointment, but also a faith that the long arc of history will prove they succeeded - pointing to data that roughly 1 million Americans per day are now getting vaccinated under Trump’s watch, ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s own vow to accomplish the same. POLITICO spoke with 11 officials closely involved in the conception of the vaccine project, in addition to other government officials and outside advisers, about how that optimistic vision of “MP2" became “Operation Warp Speed” - and where the rollout went astray in recent weeks. It’s a deflating end for the Trump officials who conceived of Operation Warp Speed last spring, hanging themed posters inside the health department that boast the slogan “Because Winning Matters!” We are phasing in a new structure,” tweeted incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki, adding there’s an “urgent need to address failures of the Trump team approach to vaccine distribution.” Operation Warp Speed “is the Trump team’s name for their program. ![]() The incoming Biden administration on Friday morning announced they’d even do away with the initiative’s branding, which President Donald Trump has touted for months. Physicians and logistics experts have critiqued the disorderly rollout, arguing that the Trump team should have done a better job of coordinating the nation’s mass vaccination effort. Governors say the Warp Speed effort has made promises it didn’t keep, with deliveries of doses falling short and reserve supplies exhausted. But the officials who expected to be taking a victory lap on distributing tens of millions of vaccine doses are instead being pressed to explain why the initiative appears to be limping to the finish. The Trump administration did help deliver a pair of working vaccines in 2020, with more shots on the way. ![]() Now, in the final days of the Trump administration, their “MP2” - later redubbed “Operation Warp Speed” - occupies a peculiar place in the annals of the administration’s ill-fated response to Covid-19: In many ways, it was successful, living up to the highest expectations of its architects.
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