- A coronavirus vaccine may be ready to go by early 2021, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
- Without an effective vaccine, a second coronavirus wave may hit this coming winter.
When the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep the nation back in March, it wasn’t long before Dr. Anthony Fauci became a household name. A renowned immunologist, Fauci quickly became the most visible member of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force and, for all intents and purposes, the face of the government’s coronavirus response.
Recently, Fauci sat down for an all-encompassing interview with Healthline where he touched on the current state of the coronavirus pandemic, how he thinks things may play out going forward, and more.
One of the more interesting tidbits of the interview centers on the ongoing work to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. For as effective as the lockdown measures and social distancing guidelines have been, the reality is that many experts believe a second coronavirus wave is inevitable without a proper vaccine. To this point, a May report from the the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota articulated that the coronavirus pandemic, in some form or another, could persist for as long as two years if a vaccine isn’t developed.
Getting right down to it, Fauci explained that the work scientists and researchers have done to come up with a multitude of vaccine candidates so quickly has been impressive and nothing short of unprecedented.
Still, Fauci cautioned that an effective coronavirus vaccine is by no means a guarantee:
Hopefully by the end of this year we will develop a vaccine we can deploy. We can never guarantee that. You can never, ever guarantee the success of a vaccine. We just have good experience to know that we are aspirationally, cautiously optimistic that we will have one by the end of the year.
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We are producing vaccine at risk, which means we are producing it even though we don’t know yet if the vaccine works, which means if we are lucky and it does work, we will have saved several months and made it available as soon as the winter.
If we are wrong and it doesn’t work, then we will have essentially wasted a few hundred million dollars. We feel it is worth the risk because the consequences of not having a vaccine ready by the winter for those who need it.
As to how the coronavirus pandemic will end, Fauci said that society will eventually return to a pre-coronavirus state, though there’s no timeline as to when that might happen.
“I think as a word of hope,” Fauci said, “people should realize: Don’t despair. This will end, and we will get control over it.”
