The decision by the Food and Drug Administration Friday night to issue an emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is a critical breakthrough in the battle against the disease that has infected more than 15.7 million Americans and killed nearly 300,000.
The FDA ruling that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective is just a first step in a massive rollout of the vaccine. Now the enormous task of distributing the vaccine around the nation begins.
But a crucial obstacle to widespread vaccinations will be public hesitancy to take the vaccine, driven by doubts, fears, and misinformation spreading throughout the nation and the world.