Unfortunately a vaccine won’t be coming anytime soon. From what all the vaccine experts have said, and what I have corroborated, it seems like late 2021 may be the EARLIEST we will have one.
There’s a whole hell of a lot that goes into initially creating a vaccine. This initial process takes a lot of time, and it takes a very high number of resources. Which also means, it takes A LOT of money. From estimations, a vaccine can cost upwards of 2 billion dollars to fully fund. And from what I understand, that isn’t necessarily for a vaccine that is fully tested and proven to be effective. Which brings me to the next point, extensive testing. (To clarify, personally I don’t care how much money or resources it takes. But unfortunately that isn’t how the world operates).
I oversimplified the initial creation process, but that alone takes so much testing and trail and error. They have to be as sure as possible that it’s safe to even
start human trials.
Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (N.I.A.I.D.), said
“A vaccine that you make and start testing in a year is not a vaccine that’s deployable. The earliest it would be deployable is in a year to a year and a half, no matter how fast you go.”
A covid-19 vaccine developed, licensed, and manufactured at a global scale in twelve months would be an unprecedented, remarkable, even revolutionary achievement. No other vaccine has come close to being developed that quickly.
Certain officials do not understand that “being in people,” as in human trials, is not the same as having a product. Clinical trials are conducted on healthy people, which is inherently challenging. “
You certainly don’t want a vaccine that can make it worse,” Shiver said. “There have been some vaccine candidates historically that could actually enhance the disease.” Sanofi is working with the United States Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a sort of biomedical darpa, to advance a covid-19 vaccine based largely on the vaccine candidate it had developed for sars. Shiver told me that the authority doesn’t expect to have anything ready for human trials until much later this year. “It’s difficult,” Shiver said, “to see how, even in the case of an emergency, a vaccine could be fully ready for licensure in a year and a half.”
So much goes into vaccines. As stated above, having one that is “fully ready to go”, meaning one that has been reliably tested in its efficacy, and that has been tested to be safe for human consumption, within a year is unheard of, to be clear.
I’m not saying this to freak anyone out. But I don’t want anyone to have faulty expectations of there being a vaccine “soon”.
To read the full article in which I have taken quotes from, here it is:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-long-will-it-take-to-develop-a-coronavirus-vaccine/amp
More on the history of vaccines and the development:
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation
