Coronavirus vaccine researcher: 'People will die because of a lack of faith in the system'

Coronavirus vaccine.
(Image credit: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images))

The clearest way for the U.S. to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, Stat News reports, is to achieve herd immunity through vaccination. Experts estimate that will occur once 50 to 70 percent of the population is protected. But, as Kawsar Talaat, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University points out, "the most effective vaccine in the world is useless if no one will accept it."

There's a lot of skepticism about a coronavirus vaccine across the political spectrum in the U.S. A new Axios poll released Tuesday showed that only 43 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of Republicans would take a first-generation vaccine as soon as it's available, and the numbers have trended downward rapidly over the last few months.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.