THE VACCINE RESISTANCE

FOR ALL THE FLAK THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS taken over the federal government’s response, or lack thereof, to the coronavirus pandemic, the government’s vaccine development project, Operation Warp Speed, looks like a winner. According to Pfizer, its vaccine prevented COVID in 95 percent of participants in its clinical trials, which are now complete. Moderna’s vaccine, which got $1 billion in U.S. government support, prevents 94 percent of cases, the company said.

It would be hard to exaggerate the degree to which experts have been surprised, and relieved, by these preliminary results. Early in the pandemic, conventional wisdom held that the best we could hope for was a slightly better hit rate than seasonal influenza vaccines, which in a good year protect 50 to 60 percent of those inoculated; the Food and Drug Administration set the target for COVID vaccines at a modest 50 percent. Now we have two vaccines that, in theory, are powerful enough to stop the pandemic in its tracks.

Theory, of course, is always cleaner than reality. As the Pfizer vaccine wends its way through a fast-track approval process and the company prepares to ship millions of doses in December, health officials face a public that is skittish about the safety of the vaccines they will soon be asked to receive. Convincing millions of people to report to their doctor’s office or pharmacy for an injection of a lab-made genetic substance that has never before been used in a vaccine, and which was rushed from discovery to market in under a year, would not be easy in the best of circumstances—and these, all would agree, are far from the best of circumstances.

In our toxic political culture, the pandemic has cleaved the nation in two halves—those who believe in masks and Dr. Fauci and those who believe in personal liberty and President Trump. Acceptance of a potential COVID vaccine tends to split along partisan lines; in polls, Democrats are more