Operation Warp Speed, to accelerate getting people COVID vaccine development so they could get vaccinated, was the greatest thing Donald Trump ever did as President. His supporters honor him (and the MAGA legacy) by getting their COVID vaccine ASAP!

(Cherry Hill) — By the time you read this, I’ll be 95% protected from COVID-19 thanks to the Pfizer jab.

The sense of relief and hopefulness that came with that 2nd shot was the sweetest feeling I’ve encountered in ages. It was a surreal moment, tucked behind the jewelry counter of a mothballed Lord & Taylor, where all that pent-up COVID anxiety I’ve been carrying simply vanished.

The scene moved me to tears which made the nurse cry which, in turn, made the student nurses cry. Clearly everyone was on the verge of a good cry. That was quickly followed by laugher, the kind of NOT self-conscious laughter that comes when some dreadful tension is finally broken.

COVID protocol says you’re not supposed to hug strangers. But the nurse who jabbed me, we hugged anyway. Telling a COVID nurse “thank you” feels like the understatement of the year but I couldn’t come up with anything better. I was, it would appear, dumbstruck with gratitude.

So much gratitude in fact, that there’s plenty to go around.

Thanks, Donald Trump

If Donald Trump handled the COVID pandemic with a teensy bit of competence and compassion, he’d still be president today. But he didn’t. And now Joe Biden’s in the White House and $1400 relief checks are in the mail.

Thanks to Biden’s stewardship these past couple months, over two million Americans are getting their COVID jab every day. That astonishing pace that should ensure Biden’s “100,000,00 shots in 100 days” pledge comes good weeks ahead of schedule. But here’s the tea: no amount of steady execution from Biden matters to my immune system if there weren’t any vaccines to distribute.

“Operation Warp Speed” was a Trump-era initiative to expedite the research, development, and delivery of vaccines to prevent transmission of the coronavirus. Trump basically dedicated unlimited federal resources toward finding a vaccine in record time and it worked!

By all accounts, the development of multiple vaccine therapies so quickly is among mankind’s greatest scientific achievements.

And I think Trump deserves a little credit for it.

Trump was clearly craving credit and attention when he released the following statement, slightly truncated to to omit the racist garbage part:

“I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 vaccine that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for five years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers.”

Most of the credit for these amazing vaccines goes to American taxpayers who foot the bill. Let’s also lavish praise onto the scientists whose brilliance and diligence turned the tide on a disease that’s killed 530,000 Americans, and counting.

But when light finally appears at the end of a long, scary tunnel, you might discover that there’s enough gratitude to spread around. Including some for Donald Trump who, for all his faults, aimed a firehose of cash toward vaccine research and by god it worked!

I happen to feel strongly that vaccines are the biggest pubic health advancement in human history. We don’t have to get into that debate here, honestly that’s a convo you should be having with your doctor anyway.

I can say from personal experience that not getting diphtheria, polio, measles, pneumonia, tetanus, whooping cough, or hepatitis is infinitely better than the alternative. Adding COVID to the list of dreadful diseases I’ll probably never get feels awesome! Everyone deserves to know the gratitude and relief that came with my second shot. That includes Trump voters who are generally less enthusiastic about the COVID vaccine and/or vaccines in general.

Conservatives looking for evidence of Trump’s goodness should point to Operation Warp Speed as proof of Trump’s ability to do great things (at least when he put his mind to it.)

Operation Warp Speed will surely go down in history as the greatest thing Donald Trump ever did as President. His supporters honor Trump’s greatest accomplishment by getting their COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible and then bragging out it on social media.

Yeah but….

If you’re reading along curious where this generosity toward Trump came from, I feel ya. All he really did was hand over a blank check. So I’m probably being too generous, especially considering all the other goofy/stupid/dangerous things Trump said to make America’s COVID problem much worse than it had to be.

Like when he told us to fight COVID by injecting bleach. The mind still reels.

But sometimes you gotta kiss some ass to get what you want.

The whole point of this essay is to create a climate where more people get their COVID-19 jab. If reframing Operation Warp Speed as Trump’s greatest accomplishment means his supporters reconsider their own vaccine hesitancy, then I’m happy to say nice things about Trump all day long.

Jay Lassiter is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose immune system is cranking out COVID-19 antigens as we speak. He’s over on Twitter @Jay_Lass.