A Reality Check on Promising Covid-19 Vaccines

FEATURING PETER MAYBARDUK – Two pharmaceutical collaborations have announced, 1 week apart, that their preliminary studies on a Covid-19 vaccine have yielded promising results of more than 90% effectiveness. Rather than publish their results in peer-reviewed scientific journals Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, and more recently Moderna, announced the tantalizing results via press releases. Both saw their stocks respond in kind and after each announcement President Donald Trump took pains to take credit. But how excited should Americans get about a vaccine and a potential return to normalcy?

Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Global access to Medicines Director.

This story originally aired on November 16, 2020.