Will a COVID-19 vaccine be safe and effective? Why should I trust a new vaccine and not stand back and let others take it first? On the other hand, if a vaccine turns out to work well, will there be enough of it to go around? These questions and many others are swirling in the public conversation as dozens of companies sprint to beat back a once-in-a-century pandemic. Physician, vaccine historian and Science reporter Meredith Wadman takes you on a guided tour of the vaccine landscape and what to expect in the coming months as COVID-19 vaccines begin to roll out.  Author of a highly acclaimed book, The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease, about a politicized contest to produce a rubella vaccine during a 1960s epidemic, Wadman also reports on today’s vaccine politics for Science, making her uniquely poised to shed light on the unfolding, unprecedented contest among companies. Wadman is a gifted science communicator who also probes how the COVID-19 vaccine front-runners work, explaining them in especially lay-friendly terms. 

Childhood vaccines are under attack as almost never before, with anti-vaccination voices heartened by the “alternative facts” that President Donald Trump has expressed from his bully pulpit. Meredith Wadman, the author of The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease, counters these voices with sane, grounded, evidence-based truth about vaccines and the tremendous public health benefits they have delivered in the last 60 years. Wadman, an Oxford-educated physician, is also a veteran medical reporter who communicates science in a lively and accessible way. She tackles, without being dismissive, some parents’ unfounded fears that vaccines cause autism, or overwhelm a small child’s immune system. And Wadman tells stories, ranging from her time watching toddlers die of vaccine-preventable measles in Apartheid South Africa to the all-but-forgotten, devastating German measles epidemic that swept the country in 1964 and 1965. Also known as rubella, the German measles virus selectively attacks fetuses in the womb. In the mid-60s, there was no vaccine, and tens of thousands of babies were born blind, deaf, intellectually disabled, with damaged hearts, or with some combination of these conditions. Wadman reminds us of the bad old days – and in doing so makes clear the enormous importance of today’s vaccines.