The Great Vaccine Race
By: Bashar Salame
Tags: Covid 19, Vaccines, Society, Health

Big bets on long shots

Expenditures by the U.S government are closing in on $10 Billion to bring a viable vaccine to market. Some candidates who received funds including, Johnson&Johnson, Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are all industry heavyweights, while one, Novavax, awarded $1.6 Billion in grants, has never in their thirty-three year history brought a vaccine to market.

Some level of optimism, as well as reservation, exists with each biotech firm and their respective clinical trials. There is a high degree of coordination between American, European and Australian trials, many of which are being conducted across borders.

While not verified by global health agencies, Russia has registered a vaccine, with President Putin indicating one of his daughters was a trial subject, and has been vaccinated. As of this writing, the United Arab Emirates has approved a vaccine from Chinese state owned manufacturer Sinopharm, to be used on front line healthcare workers before Phase III is completed. The UAE has 31,000 volunteers participating in the clinical trials, and officials have reported no adverse reactions thus far.

When a vaccine against Sars-Cov-2 is ready for use stateside, some critical questions remain; how many people will volunteer for an injection, will it be mandated for children prior to attending school, or travelers boarding a plane, and what are the ramifications, if any, for those choosing not to vaccinate?

A Harris Poll survey in the summer of 2019, before the current pandemic, of 2,000 U.S adults is in no way encouraging. Of those polled, 45 percent noted at least one source that caused doubts about the safety of vaccination. The top three doubt-causing sources were online articles (16 percent), past secrets/wrongdoing by the pharmaceutical industry (16 percent) and information from medical experts (12 percent). The survey also asked Americans to choose a statement that best represented their feelings about vaccine safety and efficacy. While the vast majority (82 percent) chose in favor of vaccines, 8 percent selected responses expressing serious doubt. An additional 9 percent said they were unsure.

More recently (August 7th 2020), Gallup found one in three Americans would not opt for a Coronavirus vaccine, this even if the vaccine was both free and FDA approved. Such resistance is not unprecedented. When Gallup in 1954 asked U.S. adults who had heard or read about the then-new polio vaccine, “Would you like to take this new polio vaccine (to keep people from getting polio) yourself?” just 60% said they would, while 31% said they would not. So far, willingness to adopt a new vaccine looks similar today.

It’s one thing to answer a poll question, but another to make a real life, health balancing decision for yourself and your family. Here in Michigan, our Governor Gretchen Whitmer received a flu vaccine shortly after an address on the importance of such measures. Flu vaccines though, have a decades long record for safety.

Will President Trump volunteer for a Coronavirus vaccine? Will he encourage his extended family, and supporters to do the same? That and other questions remain open and unresolved for now. Should they chose to however, China, and possibly Russia, have one available.