This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 16, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The massive project that is a COVID-19 vaccine entails development, government approval, manufacturing, and of course distribution.

Contrary, perhaps to the hopes of the current president, it's a very globalized supply chain, and Cato Scott Lensicum wouldn't have it any other way.

There's a seven or eight pharmaceutical companies right now that are really in the lead for producing a COVID vaccine.

And countries around the world are scrambling to secure early access to doses because of course once you go through the trials and

actually have a vaccine you still have to manufacture that vaccine and

because of that you're going that you have a lot of countries already

contracting with these pharmaceutical companies for the first supply that comes

off the assembly line. And the United States is certainly there.

According to the Wall Street Journal from about a week ago, only the United Kingdom

has secured more doses than the United States and it's really pretty

pretty darn close in terms of in terms of that race And the United States has done that

by not securing vaccines with one company,

but to hedge their bets, because the vaccines

are all still on trials.

They've secured them with it looks I think at this point

it's six different pharmaceutical producers six different vaccines of the eight or nine that are out there.

Let's assume two or three of these eventually make it to market.

What does it that distribution look like?

Right.

Well, just looking at the vaccines themselves, so there's obviously a lot of parts to this.

...