Science: Unveiling ‘Warp Speed,’ the White House’s America-first push for a coronavirus vaccine
“Conventional wisdom is that a vaccine for COVID-19 is at least 1 year away, but the organizers of a U.S. government push called Operation Warp Speed have little use for conventional wisdom. The project, vaguely described to date but likely to be formally announced by the White House in the coming days, will pick a diverse set of vaccine candidates and pour essentially limitless resources into unprecedented comparative studies in animals, fast-tracked human trials, and manufacturing. Eschewing international cooperation — and any vaccine candidates from China — it hopes to have 300 million doses by January 2021 of a proven product, reserved for Americans. Those and other details, spelled out for Science by a government official involved with Warp Speed, have unsettled some vaccine scientists and public health experts…” (Cohen, 5/12).