Ted Cruz joins right-wing chorus mocking Covid vaccine coverage following Trump’s defeat

Texas senator met with swift backlash over false claims surrounding the novel coronavirus and Donald Trump’s defeat

Senator Ted Cruz (R—TX) joined a right-wing chorus online this week when he mocked media coverage surrounding a potential vaccine for COVID-19, seemingly lamenting how the news broke just days after President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 US elections.

The Texas Republican quipped about the news that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has developed a potential vaccine to the novel coronavirus that had proven to so far be 90 percent effective, writing in a tweet: “Miraculous. COVID cured, the very instant the networks called the race for Biden.”

Mr Cruz published the social media post on Monday — two days after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his first major speech after news outlets projected his victory in the race against Mr Trump. He retweeted a post which effectively suggested the news had stopped covering the global coronavirus pandemic following Mr Biden’s victory.

US news outlets have been ferociously covering the pandemic while simultaneously tracking days of ballot counts in states across the country, breaking explosive news when the country surpassed more than 100,000 daily cases.

That fact quickly noted by many prominent media professionals, including CNN journalist Jake Tapper, who wrote in response: “We continue to cover this horrible crisis that our public officials are not doing enough to stop.”

The TV news anchor then linked to a video of his segment from the previous night in which he reported the news on the US surpassing 10 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began earlier this year. He also tweeted a second link featuring coronavirus coverage from the day earlier.

Pfizer published an announcement early Monday morning announcing that a vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90 percent effective in a study including 43,538 participants.

In a statement, Pfizer CEO Dr Albert Bourla said: “Today is a great day for science and humanity. The first set of results from our Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent COVID-19.”

“We are reaching this critical milestone in our vaccine development program at a time when the world needs it most with infection rates setting new records, hospitals nearing over-capacity and economies struggling to reopen,” the CEO added. “With today’s news, we are a significant step closer to providing people around the world with a much-needed breakthrough to help bring an end to this global health crisis.”

Mr Cruz was far from the only one of the president’s allies spreading misinformation in the days after his electoral defeat.

Pfizer’s CEO was forced to dismissed a claim made by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, that the pharmaceutical company withheld its announcement of the vaccination until after the election so as not to help Mr Trump in his re-election bid.

“The timing of this is pretty amazing,” the first son said about the news of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. “Nothing nefarious about the timing of this at all right?”  

The doctor told CNBC on Monday that Pfizer was “not working with the election as a timeline” and was instead following the “speed of science.”