Vaccine success would be street cred — and more

We’re in the thick of a biopharmaceutical Space Race. The Trump administration has cherry-picked five firms it believes are best poised to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. And, beyond doing good for all of humanity, there’s a lot at stake for the drug makers themselves, STAT’s Damian Garde writes. For some, success would be a matter of national pride; for others, it could serve as a rebuke to voluble skeptics.

Every drug maker is hoping to cross the finish line early.

“Everybody knows about Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, the first people to go to the moon,” one pharma bigwig told STAT. “Who were the fourth and fifth people on the moon?”