Hi, I'm Dan Premack, and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Google.

Today's Tuesday, October 13th.

Early voting numbers in Georgia are way up, San Francisco apartment rental prices are way down,

and we're focused on getting a vaccine.

Johnson and Johnson late last night announced that it's paused phase three clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, after one patient reported what the company calls an unexplained illness.

This comes just weeks after AstraZeneca paused its phase three clinical trials, because

one of its patients experienced a neurological abnormality.

Now, to our knowledge, neither of the other two phase three trials in the U.S., one being

conducted by Pfizer and the other by Moderna, have been paused, although Moderna did slow

its trial a bit after struggling to enroll enough people

of color.

Why all of this matters, of course, is that America is basically in a holding pattern

until one or more of these vaccines gets approved and distributed.

Our economy, our schools, our general way of life is beholden to this pharmaceutical process. With no guarantee,

it'll ultimately succeed. I mean, we all seem confident that there will be a vaccine,

probably by early next year, but that's not based on any particular reason. It's just based on a

general faith in science and our collective need to be right about it. So we want to dig in deeper

on where the vaccine race currently stands and the remaining hurdles in its path with former

CDC director, Dr. Tom Frieden. That conversation in 15 seconds. We're joined now by former

CDC director, Dr. Tom Frieden. How should Americans think about or

understand these phase three trials taking a break because of one or more sick patients?

Counterintuitively, it's reassuring. It tells us that they're going to look really closely,

...