Vaccine Development Summary
 

Interesting article where the writer discusses various vaccines being developed, the biological strategies used (he covers 6 different methods), lists the Pharma that is working on them, and any published timelines, statuses, etc.

Covers about 30, although there are many more in the works. He believes these are the leading contenders.

No guarantee that any will work (or that more than one MIGHT work), but a nice summary. Technical enough to give it some meat; but you don’t have to be a doctor to understand it, either.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...update-june-29

Updated Tracker:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...e-tracker.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5348876/

Don’t forget logistics...

I'm very confident something (more than one likely) will be in production and distribution by year end if not earlier. There has never in history been this much technology and money directed at a medical problem.

A coronavirus is a simple mechanism in the grand scheme of things, we've already mapped the genetics and chemistry of the thing... not hard at all with modern techniques to throw a custom-wrench into the gears, one way or another. Really the only things up in the air are safety and production scalability.

There are several vaccines which are already shown to behave in an acceptable manner, safety and efficacy. Side effects and antibody production are about what you'd expect and are in the ballpark with other vaccines in use. Timing of certification and deployment depends on urgency at this point, ie what's the risk tradeoff between early certification (under emergency authorization) vs the cost of a sustained on-going covid induced societal and economic train wreck.

It's true that biology is complex and you might get surprised but with about 200 candidates in the works the cumulative odds are very good. If you don't hear that from many experts, recall that bureaucrats have to pull their punches and CYA in public. Personally my planning assumptions are to get through the next year and then worry about economic recovery.

Moderna shared more good news today...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKCN24F2SW

Phase 3 of around 30,000 people testing the Moderna vaccine starts at the end of the month. Hoping this comes through for everyone...

July 14 article: Merck CEO Frazier says COVID-19 vaccine hype a 'grave disservice' to the public:

https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccine...vice-to-public

From what I extrapolated in an article, day 1 is first injection, day 29 is the 2nd injection. Then two weeks after the second injection they’ll know if it’s working. So if it starts August 1. We should theoretically know by mid-September.

In terms of whether or not that will save us all in terms of an aviation industry collapse, should the vaccine even work? I don’t think so. Especially if it won’t be available until 2021. Without more government funding, most industries/people won’t make it till 2021 if we keep the world like this until then.

That’s just something that I’m not understanding. The furthest along vaccines aren’t going to be available within 6 months if they even work. Better get more government funding ready to get us that far.

Some of those obstacles are artificial in nature. Anything a big pharma CEO says in public is not a public service announcement... it's a self-service announcement. You just don't know what his angle is.

That doesn't necessarily make him wrong, but I'd probably look at the big picture... lots of people who also know what they're doing are spending billions, and their goal is certainly somewhere around year-end, because somebody else might eat their lunch if they take too long.

Once a vaccine is approved, by whatever mechanism, governments will be willing to spend many billions to expedite production if the private sector can't go it alone.

Well said. This is what I keep in mind when I hear some pharma CEO claim "a vaccine is coming soon."

Anything a big pharma CEO says in public is not a public service announcement... it's a self-service announcement. You just don't know what his angle is.

True, but there are other vaccines that the government is already producing (around 100 million doses) just so that they'll be available in case they are effective. So if this one is showing so much promise, maybe they'll do the same and start production now.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/us-g...s-vaccine.html

It could also be they are way behind in development of something that is going tot have a lot of customers.