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Comment by sombremesa | Hacker News Reader

This is far too optimistic. Where is the hard data that a vaccine could (even in a completely sunshine and rainbows scenario) be "ready" as early as June? The best I've been able to estimate is 18 months. This includes manufacturing and supply of course - a vaccine is useless if you can't get it to people at reasonable cost.

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I see what you’re saying. I can see speed being a factor... and maybe I’m uninformed... but I’m 99% sure in a true pandemic cost will not be a factor.

Yeah Congress has already earmarked billions for this virus.

Well, a high cost implies some shortage in production vs demand. The government can buy all the vaccine available and distribute it for for, but if there's a shortage in production due to chemical supply chain difficulties then there's no magic bullet.

Did you mean to comment on the other Gates article, 'How to respond to COVID-19'? In that he says candidate vaccines "could be ready for larger-scale trials as early as June", not that they could be mass produced so soon.

Pasted from below, "Without getting lost in the details, the company who the US government is funding to develop the vaccine (Moderna) uses a new technology that will likely become the next generation platform for vaccines. Instead of providing to your body the "Wanted" poster with a picture of the virus, it sends the PDF to the cell which then prints its own "Wanted" poster. This makes the response much more predictable, controllable, and robust--your body believes your own cells more than foreign shit from the outside. Since 2015, Moderna has already tested this idea in humans and shown it to be safe with 6 other viral targets (H7 and H10 Flu, Zika, CMV, hMPV/PIV, and Chikungunya). In all of these human studies, it has detected antibodies at protective levels against the target virus. So in terms of safety, we are likely already there. This is why Tony Fauci is willing to accelerate so fast. Thinking forward, maybe the US govt will fund manufacturing at risk. Just start making it at scale, right now. Moderna's current capacity is unknown based on their earnings call last week, but back of the envelope math of the mRNA process puts production capacity in the millions of doses per month without additional build-out. That's enough to start with US health care workers and the vulnerable (>70yo, Immunocompromised, etc) within 6 months if needed."

Trump was in a press conference this week with health officials who claim there is a potential vaccine already in the pipeline, but it takes 4-6 months and 11 months for the next 2 rounds of testing (which does not include the possibility that it doesn’t work and doesn’t include the manufacturing ramp up time). If nCoV19 is seasonal, it likely won’t be ready for the next 2 cold seasons.

The White House then followed it up by saying that Trump's comments were referring to a vaccine for ebola, not nCoV19[1]. At this point, I don't think it is worth listening to anything that Trump says, and to wait until the fact checkers and corrections from his handlers strip everything out.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/white-house-says-trumps-vacc...

Vaccines have already been developed, but testing can take months.

FWIU Step 1 is developing a vaccine, Step 2 is making sure it's safe for humans in both the short and long term. It appears that step 2 is the obscenely time consuming part. Keep in mind we still don't have a safe SARS vaccine after..what..15 years?

Without getting lost in the details, the company who the US government is funding to develop the vaccine (Moderna) uses a new technology that will likely become the next generation platform for vaccines. Instead of providing to your body the "Wanted" poster with a picture of the virus, it sends the PDF to the cell which then prints its own "Wanted" poster. This makes the response much more predictable, controllable, and robust--your body believes your own cells more than foreign shit from the outside. Since 2015, Moderna has already tested this idea in humans and shown it to be safe with 6 other viral targets (H7 and H10 Flu, Zika, CMV, hMPV/PIV, and Chikungunya). In all of these human studies, it has detected antibodies at protective levels against the target virus. So in terms of safety, we are likely already there. This is why Tony Fauci is willing to accelerate so fast. Thinking forward, maybe the US govt will fund manufacturing at risk. Just start making it at scale, right now. Moderna's current capacity is unknown based on their earnings call last week, but back of the envelope math of the mRNA process puts production capacity in the millions of doses per month without additional build-out. That's enough to start with US health care workers and the vulnerable (>70yo, Immunocompromised, etc) within 6 months if needed.

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