Vaccine Moonshot #577
November 09, 2020
Image from Retha Ferguson
We're still in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, and one of the things many of us are hoping for every day is more good news about a vaccine. What does the Coronavirus vaccine effort look like? How does that compare to the usual way vaccines are pursued and developed? How many are in process, what stage are they at, what approach do they take, and which ones look promising? What's "good enough" for a Cornoavirus vaccine when it comes to efficacy and safety? How quickly can we roll one out when we decide one works well enough to start using in earnest? And what are the ethical implications and impacts on the wider vaccine effort of fast-tracking the first vaccine to hit the magic "ready" mark?
We deep dive these questions and the vaccine effort with chemist Derek Lowe, who has been following the vaccine effort closely and blogging about it since it began on his blog In The Pipeline.
Related links:
- Coronavirus Vaccine Roundup, Early September
- Cold Chain (And Colder Chain) Distribution
- The Vaccine Tightrope
- Vaccine Efficacy Data an update on 9 Nov of controlled efficacy data for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, not discussed in the interview which was recorded earlier in the week
Guests:
- Derek Lowe
Guest Bios
Derek Lowe
Derek has degrees in chemistry from Hendrix College, and Duke, and has been working in the drug industry for over 30 years. In that time, he's worked on drugs to treat diseases including diabetes, Alzheimers, schizophrenia, osteoporosis, and MS. He's been blogging prolificly at In The Pipeline since 2002, which makes his blog quite possibly the longest running science blog on the internet.
