July 27, 2020

The government’s own vaccine candidate, developed with Moderna, begins the largest coronavirus vaccine study yet, enrolling the first of 30,000 volunteers as Vice President Pence travels to Miami to mark the launch. Fauci calls the pace of development incredibly fast, and even sympathetic coverage such as National Geographic notes that the mRNA approach is promising but not without skeptics. STAT News argues that science alone cannot win and calls for celebrities, religious leaders, and social media companies to be enlisted to reduce vaccine hesitancy, a plan to manage public opinion around a product not yet proven safe or effective.

Fauci’s public standing dominates the day. His first-pitch baseball card breaks a Topps sales record in 24 hours, he is named alongside Colin Kaepernick for a Robert F. Kennedy human rights award, and ABC promotes a primetime special built around him. National Review counters with a list of what it calls Fauci’s recent unforced errors, a reminder that the man being turned into a cultural icon has also been wrong in public.

Reports say Trump is annoyed with Fauci and blindsided the Yankees with a first-pitch announcement of his own, the personal friction standing in for a wider fight over who speaks for the pandemic response.