Fauci says no one in the administration has seen vaccine data despite Trump's boasts that the US will have one 'very soon'

Trump Fauci briefing coronavirus COVID — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert (right), has gone on the record to say "Certainly my meetings with the president have been dramatically decreased."
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said no one has seen the coronavirus vaccine data yet, despite President Donald Trump asserting that the US will have one "very soon."
Fauci told The Daily Beast in an interview that only one person has access to the data, at this stage of development, who will assess the data and determine whether the vaccine is ready for production or needs to undergo more testing.
"These are blind placebo-controlled trials. The only ones who see the data intermittently is the safety data monitoring board…. a single unblinded statistician," Fauci told The Daily Beast. "Those data are not public data, no one can know what those data show."
"That person looks at the data and says, 'OK, let's keep the trial going, we don't have enough data to make a decision.' Or that person can look at the data and say, 'You know, there really is a very strong signal of efficacy, let's make it known,'" he continued.
That would mean that Trump himself hasn't even seen the vaccine data, though he told reporters last week, "We essentially have it."
The president has stepped back from his assertion that the vaccine would be made available as soon as October of this year, instead saying that it would be distributed likely around April 2021.
The infectious disease expert told The Daily Beast that the efficacy of a vaccine could be determined by November or December of this year, but it won't necessarily be ready for distribution at that time as well.
Even if a coronavirus vaccine were to be distributed, there is the added task of whether or not Americans would choose to be vaccinated.
Fauci described the "lack of trust in a vaccine" as "multifaceted," a characteristic that is further complicated by the mixed messaging coming out of the federal government.
"Even if there weren't any mixed signals coming out of the government, there still would be a bit of an anti-vaxx feeling," Fauci told The Daily Beast. "You superimpose a part of that... the kind of mixed signals that are coming out of different agencies, people read that in the newspaper, whether it's real or not, and they get concerned... can you believe what the government says?”
Read the full story at The Daily Beast.
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