Drug giant Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech have just announced that they have a coronavirus vaccine which is 90% effective. Is it time to party yet?
You won’t be surprised to hear that things are a bit more complicated than that—but this is still legitimate cause for optimism. Find out about the good, the bad and the logistically challenging by watching the video!
# Video chapters
00:00 What we know
01:09 mRNA vaccines
02:18 The caveats
04:58 How much can we make?
07:51 Why I really hope this works
# Sources
Here are some of the sources I used when researching this video:
Pfizer and BioNTech’s press release about the results:
Excellent BBC News article on the subject:
If you want to know a bit more, this STAT article goes into more detail than the BBC:
A statement from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness, CEPI, putting the results into context:
Twitter thread on the logistical difficulties of transporting a vaccine at 80C:
Preliminary advice to the UK Government on prioritising people for vaccination:
And this article from Tom Chivers wasn’t written at the time I made this, but it’s also really good, including a deeper dive on the unknowns about the stats:
