It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.
Now consider that Scripps Research, who is developing this, is US-based and receives a lot of federal government funding, and that Trump/Musk/DOGE have been slashing and burning all kinds of federal science staffing and funding. Also consider that their main federal funding comes from HHS, which RFK Jr., notorious vaccine hater, heads.
Then weep. Progress on this may be stalled for a long time.
Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I’m sure it’s not a perfect example of malfeasance like “hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let’s just bury the cure”, but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.
Recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits
True, that could also happen, but I wonder how transferable this type of research project is. Does the research lead actually own it and can take it with him or her to a new place, or does Scripps own it? I don’t know the answer.