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First Crowdfunded Independent COVID-19 Vaccine
An apolitical solution to the pandemic by a small European biotech.
Originally published in WORTH.
It is every nation for itself in the global race for a vaccine, as countries hurry to secure a drug for their populations. President Donald Trump’s attempts to buy German CureVac earlier in March during the peak of the pandemic led Angela Merkel and her cabinet of ministers to discuss German defense strategy for the firm. Undeterred, Trump’s administration is giving out billions to produce not-yet-finished vaccines, while in Russian President Vladimir Putin declared triumphantly in August that his country had produced the world’s first coronavirus vaccine. (Technically, China was first, but you get the picture.)
Russia managed to get to the finish line first by omitting widespread testing of the vaccine. Renamed Sputnik V, the vaccine was approved before Phase 3 trials even began. Putin’s triumph represents everything that is wrong with the vaccine race — an attempt to rush science at the risk of sacrificing safety.
In a normal world, the process of developing a vaccine would take a decade, sometimes even far longer. It needs fine-tuning and, most importantly, time to make accurate observations. Most of the fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine candidates…
