Vice President Kamala Harris said in a recent interview that the Trump administration left the Biden-Harris team with no "stockpile" of vaccines and no plan to distribute vaccines across the country.
"There was no stockpile," Harris complained to Mike Allen of Axios.
Allen followed up by asking the vice president what she was talking about.
"Of vaccines," Harris clarified. "Right? So we're looking at this -- there was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out. So in many ways, we are starting from scratch on something that has been raging for an entire year."
.@VP Harris to @mikeallen: "There was no national strategy or plan for [COVID-19] vaccinations. … We're starting from scratch."
— Axios (@axios) February 14, 2021
At a press conference last month, Fauci said "we certainly are not starting from scratch" on vaccine distribution. #AxiosonHBO pic.twitter.com/TdYnOHN1Bw
While Biden and Kamala were hiding in the basement, the Trump administration was fast-tracking the development and approval of coronavirus therapeutics and vaccines. The new administration inherited a daily vaccine rate of about one million doses per day from the Trump administration. Biden's goal of 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office was merely a continuation of Trump's success.
On the "stockpile" point, how could the Trump administration stockpile recently-approved vaccines that Democrats and public health "experts" doubted would even be in existance by Inauguration Day? Even if the Trump administration could stockpile vaccines, why would they? Isn't the goal to get people vaccinated as soon as possible?
Axios notes that even Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted that the current administration "certainly are not starting from scratch" when it comes to vaccine distribution. It's also worth remembering that then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-President Barack Obama depleted the national stockpile of facemasks and left it empty for the Trump administration.