Flashback: 'Science Guy' Bill Nye Claimed It Would Take 2 Years To Develop Vaccine
Leftist celebrity “Science Guy” Bill Nye has found himself a target for criticism after a clip from May resurfaced in which he claimed a coronavirus vaccine would take two years to develop started.
Albert Einstein is renowned for theorizing that time is relative. Perhaps what is two years to a once-popular TV kids show host is only roughly seven months for the rest of us.
In any event, Nye, like a great deal of the national establishment media, excoriated President Donald Trump in May after Trump predicted a COVID-19 vaccine could become widely available before the end of the year. NBC News went as far as to claim that a “miracle” would be needed for a vaccine to become available in such a short period of time.
That miracle has occurred. A critical care nurse in New York named Sandra Lindsay received the first vaccine injection in the U.S. Lindsay was the first of many expected to receive Pfizer’s vaccine after it received emergency-use authorization last week from the Food and Drug Administration.
First COVID vaccination in New York State. Sandra Lindsay is a critical care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. pic.twitter.com/7B0ySfeLuf
— Contessa Brewer (@contessabrewer) December 14, 2020
The FDA could give emergency-use authorization to a similar vaccine from Moderna as early as next week, CNBC reported.
Trump’s prediction that vaccines could be available this year has been proven correct, thanks to the unprecedented success of Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership the president announced May 15. So, you can’t help but look back at all the bad takes from this past spring, when Trump first shared his optimism with the world.
Bill Nye, the former TV star who hosted the children’s program “Bill Nye the Science Guy” from 1993 to 1998, was among those who were quick to spread pessimism about a vaccine becoming quickly available. Nye was so certain that such a vaccine was years away that he took to CNN to assist the media in dismissing what is now the reality of a vaccine before Christmas.
“It’s two years, everybody,” Nye said on the network in May.
“You can’t address a virus that can cross state borders at the speed of the wind without having a national or, indeed, an international program,” the entertainer also said.
“I think two years to get something that people trust,” Nye concluded.
Flashback: In May, “The science guy” @BillNye confidently predicts it will take “two years” for a Covid vaccine to become available pic.twitter.com/ChWWIM3IhD
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 14, 2020
The take, like Nye and his brand of “science,” hasn’t aged well. Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, the director of supply, production and distribution for Operation Warp Speed, told CNN at the end of November that every American who wishes to receive a coronavirus vaccine will have one available by June 2021.
“A hundred percent of Americans that want the vaccine will have had the vaccine by that point in time,” Ostrowski said.
The stunning work that went into developing the vaccines is good news for those who are ready for the beginning of the end to the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s perhaps bad news for people such as Nye, who bet against American innovation, and put their credibility on the line while doing so.
And Nye’s credibility is questionable when it comes to vaccinations.
Despite the snazzy “Science Guy” moniker, the TV personality is a former engineer who worked for Boeing before his show became a part of the mid-1990s Saturday morning lineup for kids.
“After attending the private Sidwell Friends School, Nye enrolled at Cornell University, where he studied mechanical engineering. Upon earning his Bachelor of Science degree, Nye went on to begin his career at The Boeing Company in Seattle, where he would live for many years. Nye developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor that is still used in the Boeing 747,” Nye’s Biography page reads.
While developing a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor sounds awfully impressive, it certainly doesn’t qualify the leftist as an expert in infectious diseases or vaccinations. Perhaps Nye’s lack of qualifications is why CNN asked him for his opinion about a COVID vaccine in the first place.
Nye entertained millions of millennial children on weekends back when Michael Jordan was still leading the Chicago Bulls to NBA championships. But the 65-year-old engineer has unmasked himself as a cynical, leftist ideologue at this late stage in his career.
In an apparent attempt at retaining some semblance of his former relevance, Nye sometimes parades himself around with radical leftists talk about the spooky dangers of climate change. CNN, rather than let knowledgeable scientists come on the network to make really bad vaccine predictions, gave this guy a platform to spread his cynicism.
CNN obviously has a knack for picking up people who have no idea what they’re talking about.
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