How -- and When -- Can the Coronavirus Vaccine Become a Reality?

[Initech]

It’s been six months since researchers in China said they had identified a novel coronavirus spreading in the city of Wuhan. Hope and desire for a vaccine to end the global devastation is growing with each passing week.

Almost every day, I hear people making plans around the eventual arrival of a coronavirus vaccine — office reopenings, rescheduled weddings, family reunions and international travel. In recent weeks, colleagues and friends have asked me with growing urgency: “When will we have a vaccine? Will it be any good?”

At the same time, other friends have been telling me, “When I hear that this is going to be the fastest vaccine developed ever, that doesn’t make me feel good — it makes me feel nervous that they’re going to cut corners.”

These questions and concerns resonate with me. I, too, want a vaccine, but I want reassurance that it’s truly safe and effective. So I talked to a dozen people in the vaccine world: scientists, pediatricians, pharmaceutical manufacturers, as well as staff at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

Let me tell you this up front: If you’re imagining there’ll be one golden day when a vaccine is approved and the pandemic will be over — Finally! We can all crowd into one another’s living rooms and resume choir practice again — I’m afraid it won’t be quite like that. But it will be the beginning of the end.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-and-when-can-the-coronavirus-vaccine-become-a-reality

Lots of good information in this article. If scientists are optimistic one can be made, then I am as well. Trust science.

[unblock]

1. vaccine is good, and i'm optimistic as well... eventually. but in terms of public policy,

and the course of the pandemic, aggressive health measures such as social distancing, masks, hand-washing, avoiding indoor places with strangers, etc., as well as contact tracing and quarantining is the way out of this mess.

there's no doubt a vaccine is nirvana, but these other things are things we can do *now*. whereas a vaccine, even at a very accelerated pace, will take at least another year in our wildest fantasies.

if we used the tools we have now properly and cooperatively, we could have the pandemic very much under control well before that.

sadly, we're not likely to see much cooperation in the countries headed by rotten people -- russia, brazil, india, and, of course, america.

[Initech]

2. And of course those are the countries that have been hit the hardest.

Russia? Ultra far right wing leader.
India? Ultra far right wing leader.
USA? Ultra far right wing leader.
Brazil? Ultra far right wing leader.

The thing that all of these countries have in common besides that is that none of them has listened to logic or reason when it comes to tackling COVID. And none of it is working.

[unblock]

3. donnie lives in a world where manipulation of people, image and perception of reality are everything

he's effectively completely abandoned the idea of effecting reality, even for the sake of manipulating image.

for him it's worked well enough up to this point. whatever happens, he doesn't try to control. instead, he controls how people see it, talk about it, react to it, etc. don't talk about bad news, praise dear leader, insult political opponents, etc.

the pandemic is something he can really only serve his image well by actually tackling the real-world problem. but he has zero experience in actually tackling real-world problems. he lets them happen and then figures out how to manipulate people so he profits somehow.

the virus doesn't care about any of that, so his image is finally, maybe tanking to the point of losing even some of his die-hard fans....

[customerserviceguy]

4. The "cutting corners"

argument seems invalid to me on this issue. Sure, businesses cut corners every chance they get, but they usually only do it in ways that are not obvious to a lot of people.

Whichever company comes first into the market with a vaccine knows that the whole world will be watching. If it proves to be a dud (or worse), that would be an epic fail of biblical proportions that would doom that company's future for decades.