Political Quotes

“I thank Dr. Roe for his service. Congress will miss him next year. We will miss his expertise especially in this time of crisis in the Nation. But I am going to make my remarks very brief to remind the American people who are watching what we were talking about back in spring about the possibilities of how this pandemic comes to an end. The possibilities really were, well, the virus weakens on its own, but we haven't seen that at all, or a vaccine is developed. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, because I have had NIH grants, an NIH grant is usually written for a 3-year period with a renewal because that is usually how long it takes to even begin to make a discovery. With vaccines it is typically 5 to 10 years. What we are talking about now, because of what this administration has done, is to have a vaccine being administered, being declared safe by the FDA potentially within 10 months of conceptualizing a vaccine. As Dr. Roe knows, I sit on the Health Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and foundations for Operation Warp Speed were laid by this administration years ago when they increased funding to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority which we call BARDA. One of the things they did is decide to heavily invest in vaccine technology and vaccine production, because it is one thing to discover the vaccine and to prove it is safe, it is another thing to make hundreds of millions of doses. Think about it, Mr.…”