Yes, it’s a terrible thing. Disease doesn’t care if you’re anti-vax or just immunocompromised. That’s the whole point of vaccinating as many people as possible so we can protect the ones who can’t.
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I need the vaccine as soon as it is available. My concern would be that if Trump is president when it comes out, how do know that his administration hasn’t just had syringes filled with disinfectant or some other bullshit?
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Shame they didn’t realize that about 3 seasons ago.
Yes indeed. The use of the word “rush” in the headline is suspicious. If you want a sensational result to report, it would be easy to work that word into a survey question in a way that boosts the negative responses.
If an effective vaccine is developed, I will be keen to get it, but I will obey all speed limits while driving to my doctor’s surgery, so technically I won’t be rushing.
I originally thought it would take 3 years to develop a vaccine, based on my understanding working with vaccine researchers in the recent past. I attended a videoconference in March hosted by local academic and pharma vaccine researchers that outlined exactly why things are different this time around. The primary differences are the sheer number of parallel paths (over a hundred!) and the amount of collaboration globally among researchers.
So you’re excluding all sources that actually know anything firsthand about the vaccine development effort. Gotcha.
She does a great job of outlining the typical path for vaccine development. This one is completely different. For instance, there are a dozen vaccine candidates, ranging from traditional to Moderna’s gene-based candidate, to immunotherapy candidates that have crossed over from cancer research, that are already in human clinical trials. A half-dozen or so are already in Phase 2 Clinical Trials. So going by the traditional pathway she outlines, we’re already the equivalent of 5 years into the process, instead of 5 months. She’s also assuming manufacturing ramp starts after regulatory review and approval instead of in parallel, which is not the case. Moderna, for instance, is preparing their manufacturing for full-scale while they are still in clinical trials. She also seems to gloss over that the “Quality Control” stage is actually after release. The applicant has to show FDA that they can make exactly the compound that they tested in clinical trials, and do so consistently without any contaminants, for every manufacturing line, before they get approval. Quality Control kicks in to monitor production to make sure no problems arise on an ongoing basis for the life of the product.
Finally, the figure of 20 years for vaccine development is an archaic figure (at least in terms of medical technology). By the early 2000s, that figure was 10 years, and some vaccines have been developed And released in half that time.
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