President Ford launched an ambitious vaccine program in the 1976 election year, but its failures contributed to his departure from the White House.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the United States is likely to get the Covid-19 vaccine by the end of this year, despite leading national infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci saying that it must wait until early 2021.

NYTimes reported that the Trump administration appears to have the intention of "burning up" the vaccine development phase before the November 3 election.

This is not the first time Trump and his team are optimistic about the possibility of a vaccine being approved by November 3.

Some experts such as David Axelrod, an adviser to former President Barack Obama, have accused Trump of willingness to sacrifice American safety for political purposes.

Trump immediately protested, saying that his political opponents were deliberately delaying research for the same purpose.

This is not the first time that the United States has seen its attempt to accelerate the development of vaccines to mass vaccinate the population into political controversy.

In February 1976, more than 200 recruits at the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey caught the flu.

Covid-19 has raised concerns about a repeat of the pandemic flu scenario that once killed about 675,000 Americans, or the 1968-69 pandemic with about 100,000 deaths and "evaporated" 3.2 billion dollars.

Unlike 1918, the United States in 1976 had a way to prevent a flu outbreak with vaccine shots, developed for military use in the 1930s, then licensed to the general public in the year.

However, the Fort Dix cases have been associated with the new H1N1 strain.

"We cannot risk the health of our country," said President Gerald Ford on March 24, 1976, when he proposed a $ 135 million program (about $ 615 million today) to develop vaccines and

The plan is "unprecedented in terms of both the timing and scale of the US vaccination efforts," said Richard E. Neustadt and Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg in The Swine Flu Affair, the 1978 review.

However, not everyone thinks that Gerald Ford's "speedy" vaccine program is only for the purpose of protecting the health of the people.

The Neustadt and Fineberg reports indicated Reagan had won the North Carolina primary election the day before Ford announced the vaccine program.

Ford officials said the risk of the outbreak was more important than any political concern, and said the vaccine was safe.

By July 1976, the vaccine was "only partially successful in clinical trials", prompting scientists to reconsider implementation.

By August of that year, when the US Congress passed a bill to allow the deployment of vaccines, the effort was two months behind schedule, largely due to congressional controversy over whether manufacturers would have.

Health facilities started offering two swine flu vaccines in October, one against swine flu and one against both swine and regular flu for those at higher risk.

"People flocked together to school gymnasiums or large areas. I remember my mom taking us away and waiting in line, while saying 'it's ridiculous'," said Howard Markel,

But then, 35 people, most of them elderly in various parts of the US, died after the vaccination.

"It won't be an issue if there is a pandemic, but when swine flu doesn't break out, this rare incident should be enough to end the vaccine program," said Fineberg, co-author of the annual public response study.

Photos of Ford with the vaccine have been released to restore public confidence about his program, but it is too late.

"The increase in cases was not caused by the flu vaccine directly, but it was related, so everyone concluded that the swine flu vaccine was causing Guillain-Barré," Markel said.

Markel also noted that the program's failure occurred at a time when public confidence in the US government declined, following the Vietnam War, the Watergate case and the assassinations of the 1960s.

Suspicions and concerns about this issue persisted in the American public after 1976. "Although later studies proved that the vaccine was not linked to GBS, many parents and opponents of the vaccination still viewed here.

In addition, Berman also said that the controversial vaccine program in 1976 also brought many important lessons.

Even those who do not oppose the vaccine are concerned about the safety of Covid-19 vaccine candidates.