Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Americans should be skeptical of a coronavirus vaccine.
When asked how confident he was in the FDA’s approval process, Cuomo told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he is “not that confident.” (RELATED: Fauci Says ‘Safe And Effective’ Coronavirus Vaccine To Be Developed By End Of Year)
Gov. @andrewcuomo: Americans “should be” skeptical of any Covid vaccine the CDC/FDA clear for use pic.twitter.com/yBkVsXIOWn
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 19, 2020
“I don’t believe the American people are that confident,” Cuomo said. “You’re going to say to the American people ‘now, here’s a vaccine, it was new, it was done quickly, but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it’s safe, and we’re not 100% sure of the consequences.’ I think it’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking a vaccine, and they should be.”
“So what’s it going to take to convince you that it’s safe, that it’s effective, that it should be distributed?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Well what I said I’m going to do in New York is we’re going to put together our own group of doctors and medical experts to review the vaccine, and the efficacy, and the protocol, and if they say it’s safe, then I’ll go to the people of New York and I will say it is safe, with that credibility,” the governor said.
“The CDC, George, and the FDA, doesn’t have any credibility,” Cuomo added. “You have Dr. Fauci now saying that they basically tried to muzzle him, he has the highest credibility in the nation on this issue.”
Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the safety of a coronavirus vaccine, with a recent poll finding that 61% of people said that they wouldn’t take the first generation of a vaccine. The number of people who said that they would take the vaccine dropped 8 points from August to September, dropping among both Republicans and Democrats, the poll found.
Trust in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the media to deliver accurate information about the coronavirus has also declined, a September CBS poll found. In March, 86% of voters said that they trusted the CDC to deliver accurate information about the coronavirus, and by September, just 54% of voters said the same.