Voices in Leadership During Crises: Karl Lauterbach
Jun 10, 2020
Karl Wilhelm Lauterbach, professor of Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Cologne, Member of the Deutsche Bundestag, and an Adjunct Faculty Member of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health will discuss the German response to the coronavirus pandemic with John McDonough, John E. McDonough, Professor of Public Health Practice in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of Executive and Continuing Professional Education.
22:20
JOHN MCDONOUGH (Harvard): In the United States, there's a lot of confusion about when we might expect a vaccine?
Most of the experts are saying, listen, it's going to be 12 to 18 months out.
President Trump and other leaders and people from the industry are saying, look, this is on a real fast track, and we expect we're going to have aโ
Doctor Fauci said we may have hundreds of thousands of vaccines ready in January.
What's your honest assessment of what we should expect or think about in terms of an effective vaccine?
KARL LAUTERBACH (minister of health in 2022): Well, my background, with respect to that question, is I read all of the vailable literature and am also in touch with the leading virologists in Germany,
obviously almost on a daily basis.
My impression is that it is slightly more likely that we have a vaccine in 12 to 18 months from now.
I would be surprised if we managed to have that earlier.
A vaccine that works, he has to be very effective and very safe at the same time.
And this is a difficult combination to have if you are looking at a coronavirus.
A lot of, let's say, very appealing, very modern types of vaccines that are currently tested like messenger RNA vaccines, they may work, let's hope they work but it is not that likely because so far for human, let's say, conditions,
they have never worked, they have never been employed.
I'm hard-pressed to see how we can put a vaccine into place for people that we have never seen working in humans for any other disease before.
So I would rely on more tests that routes and these routes typically with the safety you need here will take you 12 to 18 months.
That's how I would look at it and therefore, an earlier vaccine would be welcome, but we do not rely on that in Germany; we definitely do not.
Thank you.
Sauce:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkBKpv63wCw