I can’t agree with John Faso’s highly optimistic claims in his piece on “Operation Warp Speed” at RealClearPolicy:
There is encouraging news on the development of vaccines to beat the coronavirus.
No fewer than four vaccine candidates are in advanced clinical trials. Major pharmaceutical companies such as Astra Zeneca and Moderna are working round the clock to bring an effective vaccine to market.
AstraZeneca did an emergency reset of its clinical trial last week while it looks to me as though Moderna were as interested in goosing its stock price as much as in developing an effective vaccine against COVID-19.
I remain with the poll of pharma executives taken last year: the likelihood of a safe, effective vaccine being available this year approaches zero. IMO we shouldn’t be surprised if such a vaccine is never available.
I have noticed that there are some people prudently considering the logistics of vaccine administration at the scale at which it’s being contemplated. The waste problems alone will be daunting.
We will know within the next 2 months.
If there isn’t an announcement of unambiguous success; it is very bad news. Those trials are designed to have positive readouts (statistically significant) by end of the year. The only reason they couldn’t readout by the end of the year would imply there’s some X factor the vaccine designers did not anticipate, and X factors are rarely positive in clinical trials.