President Donald Trump's optimism for a COVID-19 vaccine before the end of the year raised the eyebrows of critics, but now even a Johns Hopkins University doctor has admitted the possibility exists.
"We should hold out some level of hope that if everything goes in the right direction, we could possibly be seeing a vaccine by the end of the year," Dr. Tom Inglesby told NBC's "Meet the Press."
Trump has set up Operation Warp Speed to get a vaccine to the masses, and Inglesby admits the environment makes it possible to accomplish the rare feat of a vaccine within a year.
"Coming into this year, I would have said it was completely unrealistic," Inglesby told host Chuck Todd. "Given that there are now 110 vaccine projects going on around the world that all the major vaccine companies in the world are working on this in some way, and given that Tony Fauci and Moncef Slaoui are now leading figures in the U.S. in this project and they both believe it's possible, I think it is possible."
Still, there is some shred of doubt Operation Warp Speed — led in part by Slaoui, as designated by Trump this week — can come through, he added.
"Everything would have to break in the right way, and there are many ways that it might not work," he concluded. "So, I don't think we should bank on it."
Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb shared the same level of caution and optimism.
"A lot of things can go wrong," Gottlieb told CBS's "Face the Nation." "A lot of things can be delayed. It's very hard to get to the point where you're manufacturing at high, high quantities. I would say that's probably more likely a 2021 event that we're going to have the vaccine available in sufficient quantities to mass inoculate the population.
"I do think we'll have the vaccine available in the fall for use maybe to ring fence an outbreak if you have an outbreak in a large city or to inoculate a certain portion of the population on an experimental basis to protect them, because they're at high risk of a bad outcome," he added.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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