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0 pointsdjsumdog6y ago0 comments

> race to a vaccine

This is absolutely insane. My ex was telling me today, "well we could have a vaccine in 18 months" and I am so getting sick of this bullshit big-pharma narrative.

Safe vaccines take 5~10 years to develop. A vaccine in <2 years seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Vaccines for SARS1 were very difficult to make and some caused reinfections worse or incomplete protection[0].

We still don't have safe vaccines for HIV or Herpes. I feel like people talking about vaccines in 18 months are being totally unrealistic and irresponsible.

[0] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/15/8218

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chimprich6y ago

The Oxford University team think there's a good chance they'll have a vaccine available as early as September. A university team, so not big-pharma.

E.g. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-...

Human trials have already begun, so they seem reasonably confident that it's safe and works.

I think a lot of the time taken to develop vaccines historically is due to lack of resources. That's not a problem in the current climate.

lbeltrame6y ago

To provide some context: the Oxford people have been testing their viral vector (a non-human adeno-associated virus which expresses, in this case, the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2) for malaria in the past (which failed) and for MERS (which was being trialed), so they're building on previous experience.

taeric6y ago

This is violent agreement with my point, right?

Note I am not happy about a race to a vaccine. Just feels like that is what our grand plan is.

djsumdogOP6y ago

Yes, pretty much. It's more likely we'll find a drug or surgery to prevent people from dying (if feels like we're literally throwing every compound that's already FDA approved at it in the massive amounts of emergency clinical trials).

But there's no telling if or when one of those drugs will pan out (and it would certainly be before a vaccine). There is no talk of reconstruction now, which really needs to happen.

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