Originally Posted by
Excargodog
A vaccine with a typical 5-10 year development period has some SMALL risk. But at least two of them that did have a 5-10 year development period made things worse, one of those found only in very late stage 3 testing and one not found until a million people had been given it. A vaccine developed in a year or two has an undetermined risk - because we have never done that before. Ever.
Previous vaccines took that long because they waited to fully evaluate the FINANCIAL risk before proceeding to the next step. Additionally regulators were in no particular hurry to perform their parts of the process either.
Again, they are completing the full development programs. I had speculated early on that they *might* deploy a vaccine prior to completion of all clinical trials IF the pandemic turned out to be really awful. That didn't happen, and there's no indication that anyone (including China) is skipping anything safety related.
They're just doing as much in parallel as they can, and are not being held up by red tape or financial considerations at all.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
I am concerned, however, that the expectations of most people touting the COVID vaccine as the answer to the pandemic indicate they do not understand how quickly a safe and effective vaccine can be produced.
I do understand all of that, having worked in the industry before. I also understand how governments (and private equity) are expediting the process... this is a manhattan project. I told everybody here exactly how they would do that in the very beginning of this. I understand how technical advances have allowed for the scientists to design vaccines in record times given the virus genome (a matter of hours in at least one case)
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
And their expectations of how effective that vaccine might be, and how soon a mass immunization program based upon it could help the current situation are UNREALISTIC.
I expect multiple vaccines actually, none of which have to be 100% effective. Some combination of herd immunity, individual protection, and possibly reduced severity if you do get it (that last is possible but not assured).
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
There is also the ethical issue of immunizing those healthy young people to whom COVID-19 represents a fairly trivial risk to provide herd immunity to benefit the elderly and those with multiple comorbidiies and how willing those young healthy people are going to be to be vaccinated with a vaccine with little track record for - mainly - the benefit of others.
Who says? After phase 3 trials and regulatory approval it's legal to vaccinate the public. Do vaccines now have to get reviewed and approved by some ethics panel after completing all other trials? Let me guess, the panel is chaired by Rachel Maddow?
They sure as hell "vaccinated" the economy for the benefit of 5% of the population. Euthanzed more like.
So how do you establish a "track record" anyway? In the industry that's called phase 4 trials.
Most of the things we vaccinate for are a serious health risk to a small subset of the population... vaccination programs are as much about herd immunity as individual protection.
Bottom line, all civilian vaccinations are optional at least in the US. So feel free to wait if you like. Many folks will do it so they can go back to work or school, if for no other reason.
Worst case, China will vaccinate all their folks at gunpoint and you can watch and see how it works out for them.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Those are real issues however much you might want to pretend they are not.
Not really. How does a 5-10 year development process make a vaccine safer? They still only do the same phase 1-3 trials they're doing with covid, in this case they're just paying big bucks to move the rest of the process along expeditiously. The regulators are not short-cutting safety, the pandemic is nowhere near bad enough for that, and even I agree with that.
Bottom line, there's risks and obstacles but there's no reason to believe that EVERY risk and obstacle will come to fruition. The people working on this know what all of the risks and obstacles are. I think you're underestimating human perseverance and stubborness on this one.