Opinions If we want any vaccine to actually work, we have to prepare for it now

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Fri, 2020-07-17 17:01 — mike kraft

Opinion | If we want any vaccine to actually work, we have to prepare for it now A vaccination campaign — the kind that could really make everything go back to normal — is going to take a vast, coordinated public effort. Megan McArdle Washington Post

July has been the best and the worst month so far for Americans who were hoping for an expeditious resolution to the covid-19 crisis.

It is the worst month because America’s covid response has been a vast and humiliating disaster; as European caseloads decline toward zero, the United States is flirting with new records. While Europeans resume dinner parties, the United States is wondering if it can reopen primary schools. Americans who have been trapped inside for months are starting to feel despair clawing at them — and worse, looking across the Atlantic to realize their suffering isn’t even necessary.

Nonetheless, July was the best month because we have gotten encouraging news on two vaccines, one from Pfizer/BioNTech, the other from Moderna. Both showed strong results in early trials, and both companies are plowing ahead into the final stage of testing. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious-disease expert, has publicly stated that he thinks we might have a vaccine by the end of the year.

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That’s far from a guarantee. But it is real enough, and tantalizing enough, that we need to start planning now, so that we don’t screw up the vaccine the way we screwed up the first phase of the coronavirus response.

To defeat covid-19, we may well have to have to vaccinate everyone, or as close to everyone as we can. That kind of vaccination campaign — the kind that could really make everything go back to normal — is going to take a vast, coordinated public effort on a scale that we may not have seen since the United States rolled out draft cards and ration books during World War II.

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