The United States may be within months of a turning point in the country’s fight against the coronavirus: the first working vaccine, said The New York Times.
But that stage of the fight could be more frustrating and drawn out than many hope, experts say. The first vaccines may provide only moderate protection, low enough to make it prudent to keep wearing a mask. By next spring or summer, there may be several so-so vaccines, without a clear sense of how to choose from them. Some may be withdrawn from the market.
Quotable: “It has not yet dawned on hardly anybody the amount of complexity and chaos and confusion that will happen in a few short months,” said Dr. Gregory Poland, the director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic.
Related: A network of scientists is chasing the pandemic’s holy grail: an antibody that protects against not just the virus, but also related pathogens that may threaten humans.
Some optimism: Our infectious diseases reporter has been a self-described “gloomy Cassandra” since he began reporting on the outbreak in the U.S. But now, he writes, he’s changing his tune slightly — based on vaccine progress, antibodies and expert predictions that the pandemic could be over in the U.S. by the middle of next year.
