Vaccine Testing- Araí Yegros w/ Neyl's article

 Araí Yegros: 

I. Description: The article is a scientific report on the development for an effective COVID19 vaccine worldwide. The artcile describes five main stages of standard vaccine production and commercialization:preclinical testing on animals, safety trials on human beings, expanded trials, efficacy trials, early approval by certain governments, approval by the international community and/or combined phases in which testing on human beings is accelarated. The article describes Moderna Labs strategy as well as Pfizer and Bio n Tech approach to finding a derivative of the SARS vaccine applicable to the new coronavirus, and other companies from America, China, Japan, the UK, Australia, etc. trying to establish an effective and marketable vaccine this year.

II. Analysis: This report clearly oversimplifies medical and scientific concepts that are not easily understandable for non sophisticates. It could easily fall into the pop science realm where difficult concepts are explained to common people. Even though terms like "self replicating" and "protein based" terms are explained, I cannot conceive how truly these vaccines work on the human body, as I am not a medicine student and bodily processes have always been a mystery to me. Language is clearly oversimplified. 

III. Interpretation: Even though Chinese, Russian, Japanese and even North Korean labs are not following strict protocol for the scientific community to deem this a safe and effective vaccine, the article overemphasizes how untrustworthy these labs may be because of the lack of protocol, as well as the drug they are developing. Even though as common people we must trust experts (expertise, however, is more than developing one's life to the study of a certain field, it is also being credible enough, or marketable enough for governments and the common public for this expertise to be useful: scientists who early claimed that AIDS was also transmitted to heterosexuals and not only to homosexuals with a "promiscuous lifestyle" were bashed and extremely unpopular at the beginning of the AIDS crisis) it is also a matter of geopolitics, as China and Russia compete with the US in crafting a vaccine, in an attempt to shift the balance of the geopolitical climate, challenging the still reining superpower. It is vaguely reminiscing of the Space Race, but now there are literally millions of life at stake. A cooperative standpoint is barely touched within the article. 

IV. Evaluation: this is a trustworthy and established source clearly reporting on a a new development that will hopefully return our normal lives back to us, as they try their best to simplify scientific advances for the general public. I think this is extremely newsworthy, but since very few people know how these types of medicine work, the New York Times oversimplifies this, and I'm afraid they are dumbing down many concepts: this is the scary part, I do not know how accurate this is because I am not educated on this field. 

V. Engagement: Human beings are not wired to process raw data and connect it to our real everyday lives. This is why stories are created, to give us a grasp of how data weaves the fate of our species. As much as I appreciate journalists and scientists crafting these stories for us, explaining how the standard protocol for vaccine development works,  there is still a gargantuan difference between the raw facts and "what counts" as the facts: the difference relies on pure spectacle-how facts are presented to us. (Goodell: The Role of Mass Media in Scientific Controversies) Public intervention can lead to a shift in the balance of power between competing visions of how clinical trials should be held for a more cooperative scientific ethic between communities of experts-thereby changing patterns of informal communication within science. 

 There is a scene in the science fiction book Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer where the main character, a soldier, goes into a tunnel that scientists told her during her whole training that it is a tower. Even though she trusts her training and previous experiences, the senses naturally tell her that it is a structure plunging into the ground. I feel like we can relate to this as non sophisticates, and we just have to trust experts as we are in a blindfold. The issue here is journalism, as they reports become more about clickbait than about facts, which are usually not as interesting.