Where Was the Media's Pre-pandemic Concern About Vaccine Politicization?

The mainstream media are lamenting the politicization of the country’s vaccination drive. And Fox News, and especially hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, have become one of the media’s targets for allegedly “fueling the problem.”
 
But most in the media were largely silent about vaccine politicization and misinformation before the presidential election, when leading Democrats frequently stressed their doubts about a vaccine created during the Trump administration.
 
This Newsweek headline from last October 6 was one of the very few to highlight the politicization at the time: “Anti-vaxxers Feed off Democrats’ Skepticism of Covid Vaccine.”
 
In the article, reporter Hannah Osborne highlights Democrats’ public skepticism:
 
“On September 24, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said the state will independently review all vaccines authorized by the federal government. ‘Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion,’ he said in a statement.”
 
And then there’s this from Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi: “What we don’t trust is a federal government that has been caught red-handed multiple times circumventing the health experts and ‎making political decisions seemingly to boost the president’s re-election chances.”
 
Apparently Cuomo wasn’t “circumventing the health experts” when he ignored their warnings and prohibited nursing homes from testing incoming hospital patients for Covid—which led to the deaths of thousands.
 
Or how about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden: “I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump.”
 
For the record, it was the scientists at pharmaceutical companies, not Trump, who invented, developed and tested the Covid-19 vaccines.
 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned, “Unless there is confidence that the vaccine has gone through the clinical trials, and then is approved by the independent scientific advisory committee, as established to do just this, there will be doubts that people will have.”
 
And when CNN’s Dana Bash asked vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris last September if she’d get the vaccine, Harris replied, “Well, I think that’s going to be an issue for all of us.”
 
But once Joe Biden won the November election, it all flipped.
 
To be clear, this is not a defense of Fox News or its hosts. (Personally, I got the Covid-19 vaccine as soon as I could and would encourage others to do the same.) And the media certainly have the right to examine and critique public figures’ statements about any issue.
 
But there was a sizable vaccine-skeptic population before the pandemic, and Democrats’ vocal and highly partisan pre-election vaccine doubts likely helped reinforce that skepticism. They bear some responsibility for the current vaccine resistance. Something the media would highlight—if only their memory didn’t stop at November 3.