MUCH OF MAGA NATION WILL BOYCOTT THE VACCINE

Well, so much for that October surprise.

The chief executive of Pfizer said on Friday that the company would not apply for emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine before the third week of November, ruling out President Trump’s assertion that a vaccine would be ready before Election Day on Nov. 3.

In a statement posted to the company website, the chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, said that although Pfizer could have preliminary numbers by the end of October about whether the vaccine works, it would still need to collect safety and manufacturing data that will stretch the timeline to at least the third week of November.

So there won't be a U.S.-approved vaccine before the election.

The company is the only frontrunner in the vaccine race that has said it could have proof its vaccine works by Nov. 3.

So it seems as if we might have a vaccine just after the election -- an election President Trump is likely to lose. His base is certain to link the two events, and conclude that the vaccine that emerges was deliberately delayed in order to damage Trump's reelection prospects.

That's obviously not true -- Pfizer and other companies in the race are clearly working as fast as they can to demonstrate that their vaccines are safe and effective. But MAGA Nation won't believe that.

They're already pandemic skeptics, and many of them are vaccine skeptics. But I think many of them would have gotten the vaccine if it had emerged before the election, because they would have regarded its development as a triumph on the part of their God Emperor. I think most of them will get the vaccine if he wins.

But they won't get it if he loses. The sequence of events will reinforce all their most paranoid suspicions.

Once there's a safe, effective vaccine, nations in the rest of the developed world will have very high vaccination rates. We won't. This will be an important reason why.