Ivanka Trump responded to comments from Joy Behar, a host of ABC’s ‘The View’ show, who said on Wednesday that she would only take an anti-COVID-19 vaccine if the president’s daughter took it first. The White House senior advisor assured the comedian that she was ready to accept the challenge.
“Dear Joy Behar”, Ivanka Trump wrote on Twitter, while tagging the journalist alongside her post.
“I would come on your show to do so. I trust the FDA and so should all Americans. Vanquishing this virus should be our collective top priority”.
On Wednesday morning, Behar took aim at Donald Trump’s earlier pledges to have an anti-coronavirus vaccine available by the end of this year. The host pointed out that it usually takes longer for vaccines to get developed, as she insisted that Trump “will push anything to get reelected”.
“As far as the vaccine is concerned, I’d like to inform America — in case we don’t know this because I looked all this up for you — the mumps vaccine took four years, the polio vaccine took 20 years, and the smallpox vaccine took a few centuries”, Behar said during the programme.
Talking about the smallpox vaccine, the American actress added that “it was developed initially in 1796, when they started to think about it, and it became useful in the 1950s. OK? It is not a simple thing to do”.
She then pleaded to the audience: “Don’t fall for it, and by the way, I will take the vaccine after Ivanka takes it”.
Her comments came after the AstraZeneca pharmaceutical company, which is developing a vaccine against coronavirus in partnership with Oxford University, announced this week that it had the third round of trials after the “potentially unexplained illness” of one of its trial participants in the UK. On Thursday, the Daily Mail reported that the British volunteer experienced fever, chills and other symptoms just 14 hours after receiving a shot. AstraZeneca’s trials have reportedly gathered around 30,000 participants in the UK, the US, Brazil and South Africa.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in August that one of his daughters has already been vaccinated against COVID-19 using the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, the world’s first registered vaccine against coronavirus.
