A SHOT IN THE DARK

THE UNPRECEDENTED SWIFTNESS with which medical science is developing a vaccine for COVID-19 is one of the most inspiring stories in this historic chapter. Vaccine candidates emerged only weeks after scientists identified SARS-CoV-2 and sequenced its genetic code. Universities and Big Pharma formed teams to develop vaccine candidates in short order. But just as quickly, the search for a vaccine became a political issue, and the sad result is that while the chances of an effective vaccine are rising, so is public distrust.

That’s too bad, because the medical and scientific task of developing a COVID-19 vaccine is not the only critical ingredient to a successful vaccination campaign. Public buy-in is essential, because a vaccine is only effective when people agree to be inoculated. The political spectacle surrounding the vaccine efforts is undermining the public trust. Conflicting messages that seem likely to continue for the next two months of the presidential campaign will complicate efforts by doctors and public health officials in communicating, just as the threat of an autumn wave of infections approaches.

The race for a vaccine took shape early on. By July, Moderna, the Massachusetts drug company, moved the vaccine candidate that it was developing with nearly $1 billion dollars from the U.S. National Institutes of Health into phase 3 clinical trials. Phase 3 is the gold standard in medicine, the final leg of testing a new vaccine has to complete before the Food and Drug Administration decides if its benefits are sufficiently large and its risks sufficiently small to justify releasing it to millions—perhaps billions—of otherwise healthy people. To persuade the FDA and the rest of the medical