If we do successfully produce a covid vaccine within a year or so of the disease emerging, I hope a lot people take notice of the fact that we could have probably done it before, for a lot more diseases, and haven’t bothered.
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Working in a hospital, we don’t have any choice as to whether to vaccinate or not. This honestly scares the hell out of me.
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They will sell you a drug to treat the side effects from the drug that they sold you to treat the side effects of the drug that they sold you to treat a medical condition.
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Recursive pharmacology sounds like an interesting field.
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Likewise. I hope they will be smart about this, but I just don’t know…
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Even if you have 100 million doses, they have to be administered.
If you do one dose every second, it will take nearly 3 years to do just the US, assuming everyone gets it, which you know will likely not happen.
And then you need materials for all of those doses - syringes, needles, etc.
All of this is assuming the vaccine works. I haven’t read up on this one, but the only one I’ve seen that I’d be willing to get so far is the one from Oxford. The others have been having a good amount of secondary effects or not as effective as desired.
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There are about three hundred thousand registered pharmacists in the US. ‘One dose every second’ translates to ‘every pharmacist administering a dose twice a week on average’ - which sounds like a ridiculously low rate. If each pharmacist is immunizing even ten patients a day, which still sounds a little on the slow side, that’ll run through the 100 million doses in a month.
Glass phials don’t sound too bad to scale up. They get made on the same production lines that make glass beer bottles, light bulbs, and suchlike.
I bet every one of those 300,000 pharmacists has a thousand disposable syringes on hand, since diabetics do multiple injections a day, with a fresh disposable syringe each time. They’re typically dispensed in boxes of 100. (I know, the route for the vaccine will likely be IM rather than SubQ, so the needle won’t be right, but again, the tooling at scale is already there.
The pharma industry is already tooled to work at scale. I’m much more worried about efficacy and safety.
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I’ve never gotten a shot from a pharmacist having lived my whole life, so far, in the US. Is it common somewhere in the US to receive vaccinations from people who are not registered nurses?
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My last few flu shots were administered in-store by the pharmacist - and, in fact, if I’d gone to my doc’s office the insurance wouldn’t have covered them.
For what it’s worth, though, there are about 3 million RN’s in the US, and about a million MD’s. If the vaccine can be manufactured, packaged and shipped, the providers won’t be the bottleneck.
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CVS does this nicely.
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Big pharmacies tend to have someone to give shots.
Safeway offers vaccines for flu, pneumonia, hepatitis B and A, shingles, HPV, MMR, meningitis, whooping cough, and tetanus.
I was surprised at how many when I just looked it up.
The sign at mine just advertises flu, pneumonia, and hepatitis.
I get my flu shots there because it’s also covered by my insurance and easier than booking an appointment with my regular doctor. I’ve gotten all my other vaccines from my regular doctor, though.
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I’ve gotten my flu shots from my local pharmacy for the last few years. It’s been quicker and cheaper than going to a doctor, and the shots are just as effective. (Plus the pharmacist has skill-- getting the injection hardly hurts at all. I’ve had mosquito bites that hurt worse. 
)
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The vaccine in question is actually developed mainly by a fairly small company called BioNTech, whose headquarters is a kilometre or two up the road from where I’m typing this here in Mainz, Germany. Pfizer is under contract to manufacture it in quantity in the USA.
People who are planning to tout this vaccine as a prime example of how Trump’s inspired leadership is “making America great again”, especially around the election this year, should perhaps think twice. After all, Germany is not one of Trump’s favourite countries.
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