Good afternoon, readers.
As of July 28, there are 25 coronavirus vaccine candidates in clinical development, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 100 others are in earlier-stage development.
Some of these treatments have received considerably more press than others. Pfizer, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, and Moderna are in the latest stages of active clinical trials.
But the vaccine game is a tricky one. Developing an effective vaccine can take up to 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).
That timeline gets crunched when you’re dealing with a major pandemic, and regulatory agencies rip off some red tape to spur drug development. But that comes with its own tradeoffs. Is a vaccine actually effective? How powerful is it? How long does immunity last?
It turns out that most Americans are wary of those same issues. A Politico/Morning Consult poll of voters finds that more than 60{ce8ce7cc98bffdc4302011057a79600ea02c464c5536f1477c12acdb8bd79c00} of surveyed respondents “think the U.S. should fully test any coronavirus vaccine—even if that delays rolling it out and allows the virus to keep spreading in the meantime.”
Per the survey, results were fairly consistent across political and demographic lines on trying to get a vaccine to market as soon as possible without rigorous vetting (though there were differences on whether or not respondents would get vaccinated based on ideology).
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
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@the_sy_guy