Emboldened Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens The Return To Normality
Scientists hoped the battle against the coronavirus would be won in the laboratory. According to the latest updates, a vaccine could be ready to roll out to the public in a matter of months.
“We anticipate if everything goes really well that we’ll get an answer as to whether it works by early next year,” professor Robin Shattock, who heads a team developing a coronavirus vaccine at Imperial College London, said this week, per HuffPost UK.
Already, approximately 15 volunteers have been vaccinated as part of the trial, and an additional 200 to 300 participants will be added in the coming weeks, Shattock said. The effectiveness of any coronavirus vaccine remains uncertain, he cautioned. But if the human trial proves successful, the vaccine could be rolled out to the public in the first half of 2021.
For many people around the world, the prospect of a coronavirus vaccine offers a beacon of hope and the fastest and cleanest route to a return to normality. Vaccines typically take years to develop, but amid the widespread suffering that the pandemic has caused, scientists are working to accelerate that timeline. The Imperial College London trial joins more than 150 other vaccine development efforts currently underway around the world. Another UK study, led by Oxford University, is even further along, and could produce a vaccine by the end of the year — possibly even as early as September.
Yet the unprecedented effort to develop a vaccine in record time risks being undermined by a revitalised anti-vaccination movement, which has been gaining strength worldwide since the start of the pandemic.
Conspiracy theories and misinformation, spread widely on social media platforms, have fuelled distrust of a coronavirus vaccine. As a result, regardless of when a coronavirus vaccine becomes available, an even bigger challenge may be getting the public to embrace it.
Nearly one-third of Britons may refuse to take a vaccine for coronavirus, according to a poll released last...
