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

Today is Thursday, October 29th.

U.S. GDP is up, France is locking down, and we're focused on the global fight against COVID-19.

We are now in the third wave of the pandemic, with cases, hospitalizations, and deaths all on the rise.

Or, depending on how you look at it, we never really emerged from the first wave, not just here,

but also in parts of Europe, with both France and Germany reinstituting lockdowns.

So today we want to dig deeper into the state of vaccine development, both here and abroad.

To start a few recent developments.

First, Pfizer had been expected to release safety data from its phase three clinical trial by the end of October,

but that's now been delayed

by at least a week.

Two, AstraZeneca and Johnson Johnson have both restarted their phase three U.S. trials after

they'd been paused because of adverse patient events.

Three, China is vaccinating some people, not a clinical trial, actual vaccinations.

We don't, however, have safety or efficacy

data on that vaccine. And speaking of China, it's worth noting that it and the U.S. seem to largely

be going this alone, not coordinating with each other, nor with an international coalition

designed to get vaccines to countries that otherwise

might struggle to develop them, buy them, or distribute them. We'll dig deeper into that

sort of vaccine nationalism, plus all the latest developments, with medicinal biochemist

and science magazine blogger Derek Lowe. That conversation in 15 seconds. We're joined now by Derek Lowe, a long-time

medicinal chemist and author of the In the Pipeline blog. So, Derek, I kind of want to go a little

...