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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone and now we continue with our election series, 30 Issues in 30 Days, we're in a stretch of eight days in a row, looking at pandemic issues facing Biden and Trump. Today it's the great vaccine race. Now, last night in the debate, President Trump gave a mixed message in predicting the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, declaring first that it's ready to go.

President Trump: We have a vaccine that's coming. It's ready. It's going to be announced within weeks and it's going to be delivered. We have Operation Warp Speed, which is the military, is going to distribute the vaccine.

Brian: But a little bit later, he was pressed by debate moderator, Kristen Welker, about when exactly the vaccine would be distributed. Would it be before Election Day like he has previously promised?

President Trump: Now, it's not a guarantee, but it will be by the end of the year, but I think it has a good chance. There are two companies, I think within a matter of weeks and it will be distributed very quickly.

Brian: Joe Biden was then asked his plan to make sure Americans take the vaccine and he told viewers not to trust Trump's rosy vaccine timeline.

Joe Biden: Make sure it's totally transparent. Have the scientists of the world see it, know it, look at it, go through all the processes, and by the way, this is the same fellow who told you this is going to end by Easter the last time. This is the same fellow who told you that don't worry, we're going to end this by the summer. We're about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter, and he has no clear plan and there's no prospect that there's going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.

Brian: That's pretty interesting, actually, the key to trusting a vaccine when it does come is knowing that you can trust the word of the president the way he's been talking about it. Here with me now to talk about the feasibility of distributing a vaccine before the end of the year and whether politics is playing too big a role in determining a distribution timeline is Caroline Chen, health care reporter for ProPublica who's been on the vaccine beat. Hi Caroline, welcome back to WNYC.

Caroline Chen: Hi, good morning.

Brian: Rather than start with the candidates, let me ask you first about this. Yesterday, buried in the news because of the debate and other things, the FDA and industry experts held in eight-hour panel to discuss agency standards for a coronavirus vaccine. It's not usual that these sorts of meetings happen publicly or are streamed on YouTube. What was the purpose of conducting this meeting for all to see and what were the main takeaways?

Caroline: Actually, these meetings are usually held publicly, but usually, very few people other than very maybe nerdy health reporters like myself tune in. The fact that the world was paying attention tells you how different the situation is this time that there were thousands of people tuned in and they had to stream it onto YouTube.

The reason why so many people were paying attention this time is because this panel which they call the advisory committee is an outside expert panel, and this has existed for a long time. The FDA has advisory committees because it's important for them to have outside unbiased experts that can give them advice, particularly on contentious or tricky issues like this, where they were discussing what are the standards they would need to see before allowing a vaccine on the market.

The FDA is trying to balance two things here. One is that we have a pandemic and we do want a vaccine sooner than later and typically, vaccines take years, often more than five years to come to market and we can't wait that long. But on the other hand we do need a vaccine that is proven to be safe and efficacious because there's no point in releasing a vaccine on the market if people don't trust it. The FDA was essentially saying, we've put out this guidance document with what we think is an appropriate balance of standards that we're going to ask the manufacturers to show us, what do you think?

Brian: Trump first promised a vaccine by Election Day. Now he says by the end of the year but he's not guaranteeing that either, what's feasible?

Caroline: I wanted to break down a number of different, important milestones that need to be seen. I think between what Trump was saying and what Biden was saying last night, they're actually talking about a number of different things there, which makes them all dance around to be able to all be saying truthful-ish things. What am I saying here? There are different milestones.

First of all, a trial needs to be able to have results so there needs to be data, right? That's the first key milestone. Then that data needs to be sent to the FDA and the FDA needs to say, you know what? We think this is good enough to be released to the American public, so FDA approval or authorization is the next key milestone. But at that point, especially if that happens before the end of this year, the manufacturers have said that they aren't going to be able to make that much vaccine so there'll be limited quantities.

Then what Biden was talking about, if you listen carefully to what he was saying is available for the vast majority of the public or for most people. Having enough vaccine available that most people in America could have it, is the third milestone where it's widely available. When you ask me, when are we going to have a vaccine? I'm asking you like, which one of those key milestones are you really talking about here? The question of when could we have data that tells us we have a vaccine that works, that could definitely be within the next few weeks, when are we going to have enough vaccine for most of America? That's not going to be until probably spring or summer next year.

Brian: Listeners, in our next segment, Mayor de Blasio is going to join us to talk about, among other things, a vaccine rollout plan for New York City that he announced this week. My guest for now, Caroline Chen, ProPublica reporter who's covering vaccines as we look at that aspect of the presidential race.

Biden has expressed concerns that the vaccine approval process could be politicized, obviously, while Trump and his allies, they counter that such comments from Biden and other Democrats are turning off the public to a potentially life-saving vaccine when it is released. They're sowing doubts. Is there any evidence that the Trump campaign is currently meddling in vaccine research and is there evidence that Democrats are adding to doubts?

Caroline: I think at this point, all the conversation that's been going back and forth, to me, my big concern is that members of the public who are watching this are starting to even feel that it is being politicized, the process being politicized, even if it's not and that, that will lead them to trust a vaccine less and ultimately, make them more nervous about taking it.

Even if there's no actual interference in the process, either in the trials itself or in the FDA's review process, even the perception of it being messed with in any way can ultimately lead to a member of the public saying, I don't trust this vaccine and I don't want to take it. That, to me, is my biggest concern because as I said earlier, there's no point in having a vaccine if people don't take it, that's not going to help defeat this pandemic.

Brian: When President Trump talks about the military distributing vaccine doses, what does that mean exactly?

Caroline: I think this is still being worked out actually. Operation Warp Speed is part of the process of distributing the vaccines that are going to have to go out to the whole country. As I mentioned earlier, initially, there's not going to be enough vaccine for every American that wants one and they're going to have to prioritize it. The CDC working with probably the DOD, coordinated by Operation Warp Speed, is going to be sending out a vaccine to the States and they're still talking about exactly how they're going to distribute it but there's different storage requirements.

Some of these vaccines, Pfizer's vaccine needs to be kept really frozen and negative, I think it's, sorry off the top of my head I can't remember the exact degree, but ultra-cold frozen kept in dry ice. That's going to be shipped directly from Pfizer to the States. Moderna's also needs to be kept frozen, not as cold as Pfizer's negative 20 Fahrenheit, I think for Moderna's. They all have these different requirements and then separately, there are going to be these kits being sent to the states, of extra ancillary things like needles, swabs, limited amount of PPE.

This is a huge logistical operation of making sure that all the supplies needed for people to be vaccinated, all get to the local health departments which are going to be coordinating the actual vaccination. The military is going to be involved to some degree, but I think the exact details are still being worked out and released. It's just last week that all the health departments had to send all their vaccination plans of how they're going to actually carry this out to the CDC for the CDC to review. All of this is being worked out right now.

Brian: Coming up in our next segment, listeners, Mayor de Blasio will talk about a vaccine rollout plan for New York City that he released this week. That's it for our 30 Issues in 30 Days segment for today, this was issue 25, the Great Vaccine Race. Next week we're in the home stretch. It's the week before Election Day so we'll do issues 26 through 30 and complete the set. We thank Caroline Chen, ProPublica reporter who's on the vaccination beat and vaccine development beat for such thorough reporting and such a thorough report. Caroline, thank you so much.

Caroline: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, stay with us.

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