Recently re-elected Senator Steve Daines was on the Montana Morning News show on Wednesday to speak about several issues, primarily regarding the COVID 19 vaccines headed to Montana next week.
Daines was at the Operation Warp Speed COVID response press conference at the White House on Tuesday, and was congratulated by President Trump for his November re-election.
“I was at the White House, in fact I was just one of two senators invited to President Trump’s vaccine summit,” said Daines. “It’s where he pulled together all the leaders from our country when working on Operation Warp Speed to get the vaccine out to the American people, as well as leaders from the private sector who have just been so critical with innovation, making these modern day miracles of medicine happen.”
Daines said Trump, always the showman, provided some news clips before the summit began.
“They played some clips before the President came to the front and gave his remarks showing the naysayers in the media who said there’s no way they’re going to get this vaccine out until sometime in late in 2021,” he said. “All these naysayers saying what President Trump’s trying to do, that it’s not going to happen, and he just came out with this smile on his face. Guess what it happened? We’re going to have the vaccines delivered to the American people, and to Montanans here in December.”
Daines explained one of the reasons why the vaccines were made available so quickly.
“What I fought for back in March with that big COVID relief package that we passed was to get dollars put in place to allow us to pursue parallel paths of manufacturing, as well as with testing so that we don’t have to wait for the manufacturing to start once the vaccine is approved,” he said.
Daines emphasized the importance of his addition to the project.
“Had they not passed my provision in the March CARES package, once the FDA gave the approval, which should be next week, then the production would have begun which would add another six to nine months,” he said. “What we did with this plan is we started manufacturing back in the summer months, in hopes that we’d have this vaccine approved and if it didn’t get approved, we wouldn’t ship it. But because it did get approved, we saved six to nine months, and think of what that means for our country.”
Daines said he and his wife received the Pfizer COVID 19 vaccine in a trial program and Bozeman, and said he developed antibodies to the virus.