USA and its catastrophic handling of Covid 19

Coronavirus vaccines are rapidly advancing through the development pipeline. The University of Oxford’s vaccine is in large trials in Britain, Brazil and South Africa. In the United States, researchers just began enrolling around 30,000 volunteers to test Moderna’s vaccine, and more trials are starting every day. Operation Warp Speed has set an ambitious goal of delivering 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine by January.

But the concept of developing a vaccine at “warp speed” makes many people uncomfortable. In a May survey, 49 percent of the Americans polled said they plan to get a coronavirus vaccine when one is available, 20 percent do not, and 31 percent indicated that they were not sure. The World Health Organization considers “vaccine hesitancy” a major threat to global health, and poor uptake would jeopardize the impact of a coronavirus vaccine


The World Health Organization says a vaccine should be at minimum 50 percent effective, averaged across age groups. (We know from influenza that vaccines don’t always work as well on older adults whose immune systems have declined.)

This benchmark is crucial because a weak vaccine might be worse than no vaccine at all. We do not want people who are only slightly protected to behave as if they are invulnerable, which could exacerbate transmission. It is also costly to roll out a vaccine, diverting attention away from other efforts that we know work, like mask-wearing, and from testing better vaccines.