Given the potential vaccine hesitancy therapeutics are going to continue to be critical even after one is available.

I was a bit shocked to learn that there could be as much as a 50% hesitancy rate on any new vaccine, composed of:

• anti-vaxxers
• Black people fearing a repeat of the Tuskegee withhold-penicillin experiment/crime (and anti-vaxx people are doing their best to foster this fear)
• people unwilling to trust anything produced under the auspices of the orange monster
• people concerned about the speed of vaccine development, wanting to wait until it’s been proven for a few years (normal vaccine development takes around a decade)

I was pretty blindsided by this. If there’s a vaccine, I want it — but 50% immunization is not enough for herd immunity.