Blog Post 8: News Review

COVID-19: Will there ever be a vaccine? 

The world we are living in today can be said to be a never-ending whirlwind of daily nightmares and dreams, fears and hopes. Each of us is dealing with the whole situation in our own unique way depending on our characters as individuals, financial situations and everything else in between. However, there is one thing that merges us into one being and that is hope for a vaccine that would eradicate all our troubles concerning COVID-19. 

As countries lie frozen in lockdown and billions of people lose their livelihoods, public figures are teasing a breakthrough that would mark the end of the crippling coronavirus pandemic: a vaccine.

I found this article to be a rather interesting read because it delves straight into the problems of what has become threatening to our health. Whether you are old or young and no matter how high or low is the percentage of death due to COVID-19, nobody wants to be infected by it. If one can look beneath the lines, as a reader I acknowledge that the article is a mixture of hope on one side and of hopelessness on the other. I’ve read multiple articles regarding the coronavirus and the long-awaited vaccine. Practically all of them say the same thing - scientists are working hard on a vaccine that hopefully will be out in twelve to eighteen months. 

This article, on the other hand, does not only give relevant and tangible information but shows us both sides of the spectrum. It shows the reader two extremities of our future reality. As a reader what I felt was somewhat out of place was comparing stories about vaccines that were not able to be created like the HIV vaccine and then continuing on to present the ongoing facts regarding COVID-19. To my eyes, this part of the article is unreliable because no disease is equal and no vaccine is equal. Just by giving other examples of vaccines that could not have been created in the past does not mean that this one is not and comparing one to the other does not result in anything. 

Reality is that there are two sides to the coin that the article presents in detail and what we can expect in the future and whether this may be hard to read, people need to be aware of reality whatever it may be. 

"I do think there'll be vaccine -- there's plenty of money, there's plenty of interest and the target is clear," Offit says.

But if previous outbreaks have proven anything, it's that hunts for vaccines are unpredictable. "I don't think any vaccine has been developed quickly," Offit cautions.