Covid-19 vaccine hopes and the bitter reality

There have been some promising early trials of various nascent Covid-19 vaccines, and many are hoping for a usable shot by year-end. In reality, however, we are in the very early days yet and promising early-stage trials are no guarantee of success. What's more, the rollout of any Covid-19 vaccine promises to be a contentious political process, with the US and China staking out aggressive positions on who will have early access. In this episode, featuring content from the Bloomberg P&L podcast, we explore these issues and why we should be moderating our vaccine hopes. Bottom line: It looks like we need to learn to live with Covid-19, rather than pinning our hopes on a quick-fix vaccine solution. – Felicity Duncan.As we start to slowly resume normal life, many of us are hoping that – within a year – we will have a Covid-19 vaccine and this crisis will be firmly behind us. But that hope may be overly optimistic. Despite some promising early-stage trials of potential coronavirus vaccines, we are still a long way away from the eventual rollout of a vaccine and many roadblocks remain..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.In this episode, which features content from the Bloomberg P&L podcast, we explore some of these roadblocks. We look at the practical and scientific barriers that must still be overcome before we have an approved vaccine, including the risk that today's potential candidates may turn out to have harmful side effects or may fail to provide true immunity..We also look at the broader geopolitical context of the vaccine, including the possibility that a rollout will be a real challenge. China and the US are squaring off over the crisis and a vaccine could easily become a pawn in their political chess game..All in all, it seems likely that we are going to have to stow away hopes for an easy solution in the form of a vaccine, and instead work on strategies for living with Covid-19 for the long term.

Covid-19 vaccine hopes and the bitter reality

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