Vaccination needs to be ‘bipartisan’, Operation Warp Speed leader says

Updated: Jul 27, 2021 / 10:34 PM CDT

(NewsNation Now) — A former leader with Operation Warp Speed said partisan stigma around COVID-19 vaccines needs to be removed.

Adam Boehler, who also served as the first CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, said on The Donlon Report taking vaccines, “has to be one of the most bipartisan things ever.”

It comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Americans living in 2/3 of the nation’s counties put their masks back on indoors. States, like Missouri and Florida, are made up almost entirely of counties in the CDC’s “substantial” spread category.

Boehler is skeptical the mask guidance motivates the country’s unvaccinated population to roll up their sleeves.

“I think they’re getting more vaccinated as they see the outcomes of the vaccination,” Boehler said. “I do worry, obviously, on a mask mandate, it could create a disincentive. Now, I hope that doesn’t happen. And I hope people do understand that your outcomes are phenomenally better if you get [the vaccine].”

He also emphasized the former president and his family were vaccinated, which he believes should ease some skeptics. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s second press secretary, suggested calling it the “Trump vaccine” to encourage some people to take it.

Boehler said the vaccines, a product of decades of investment in mRNA technology and the focus of Operation Warp Speed when it launched in 2020, were not expected to do so well so soon. They even had a hard time finding someone to lead the project who believed it could work.

“We interviewed the four finalist candidates, before we chose Moncef Slaoui to run it,” he said. “And three of the four said it wasn’t possible. Moncef was the only one that told us it was possible.”