In depth: How the ‘deep state’ scientists vilified by Trump helped develop vaccines in record time

The lifelong businessman who refused to wear a mask himself was able to understand vaccines as something else entirely: a deliverable that he could make happen with money. Unlike a mask, a vaccine represented a display of American technological prowess, an appealing solution that didn’t require painful steps like closing small businesses. For the president, it exerted an increasingly strong pull as the election approached.

“I do think the urgency for Operation Warp Speed was heightened by the fact that we were in the middle of an election year,” said Daniel Carpenter, a political scientist at Harvard University. “On the whole, it was a good thing — it led a potentially anti-science, anti-vaccine administration to push harder for a vaccine. What we will end up seeing in the long run is this is an unparalleled private and public sector mobilization that happened.”

That mobilization, which is pushing out the first 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week, is a testament to the power of science, and also to a global collaboration involving drug companies and government coordinated by political appointees and civil servants across the government — players and a process that Trump has at times disparaged. ...