Why a coronavirus vaccine could take way longer than a year
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
A couple thoughts spring to mind including both your standard, “it takes a while to get everyone in to get one of these,” coupled with a growing distrust of expert medical advice.
A member of my own extended family is still convinced this is a giant conspiracy by [insert flavor of the week here] to [insert flavor of the week here]. I doubt that they get the vaccine no matter how fast it’s available.
I know the goal of vaccines isn’t realistically 100% deployment, but it feels there is going to be some lag here too.
My hunch is a return to normalcy looks more like everyone wearing masks in public for the next few years, with increased distancing in confined spaces (more sweeping WFH policies!) while we wait for adoption of the vaccine.
A lot of anti-vaxxers may start begging for or even insisting on getting the vaccine once they see enough unvaccinated people around them dropping like flies.
the world is indeed not going to be the same.
I wonder if China will strictly prohibit the hunting and eating of wild animals as a result from this outbreak and the considerable international pressure, or if it’ll keep going.
Also the 60/70% figure assumes an R0 of about 3. It seems though that it is >5. Then you would need a herd immunization of >80%.
此六畜 人所饲
Horse, ox, sheep, fowl, dog, pig
These six animals are those which men keep
The thing about schools is that thy are super effective at spreading everything.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
You're implying America is more free than other parts of the world, but it just isn't.
But the continental US is a developed land with dense cities. Your idea of what your liberties should be don't justify the drastic externalities you will inflict on your neighbors.
The last big city I lived in, Fresno, is low density sprawl. The culture there is like half a million cowboys decided to move to the suburbs. They put on their cowboy crap to go to concerts at their major park. It's bizarre.
We also generally have shit public transit.
You cannot tell me that lock down is the only possible way to handle the pandemic in the incredibly low average population density of most of the US. Give me a break.
I'm so tired of this America-is-so-special argument. Freaking Mississippi has 2,260 patients now. Now what?
Now what? I'm sure you think that's a rhetorical question, but today is your unlucky day because I've spent the last 19 years getting healthier while the world says it cannot be done and generally acts like a butt to me.
Now we actively create a world where public bathrooms aren't health hazards to use at all. I propose we get Walmart to write that handbook. Their bathrooms are generally pretty damn good and there are lots of establishments where I don't want to set foot in their restroom.
Now we create a world where it's normal to call ahead or order online and pick-up instead of dining out or milling about waiting for our order because we all just showed up and then ordered.
Now we create cultural norms where you don't blow your nose at the god-damned conference table or restaurant table, jebus.
Now we create cultural norms like bowing instead of shaking hands.
Now we create architectural standards like using copper for stair rails because it's antimicrobial.
Making people a prisoner of their homes while our economy gets flushed down the toilet isn't our only option. That assumption is ignorant on the face of it. There's always more than one way to solve a problem.
First you make a absurd assertion that most of the US has much lower population density than Europe or Asia - that's true only if you measure by land area, not people, but then it's irrelevant: land doesn't contact COVID19, people do. In any case, it stopped being relevant about two weeks ago when the US overtook Italy - America's lower population density clearly didn't stop the disease.
There's a crisis going on, and I'm sorry that you will likely be affected much more by it than I will, and I agree that it's a social injustice that should be addressed in the long term, but that doesn't mean you can just wave away the crisis because you have a moral high ground. Coronavirus doesn't care.
I have no idea why you assume I will be impacted more than you. Although dirt poor, I already do remote work from home and hardly go out. My life has hardly been impacted at all. A few meetings I attend were cancelled (and now people are answering my emails for a change).
The pandemic has mostly had a positive impact on my life because the rest of the world is practicing germ control for a change and pollution levels have dropped dramatically.
I mean feel free to support my Patreon or otherwise kick a few bucks my way. I can always use more cash. But my kids sit around gleefully announcing "Coronavirus is the best thing that's ever happened to our lives" and giggling about all the free games they are downloading.
You are more likely to see epidemic being used to disadvantage other side, to make voting harder for this or that group and massive amount of lies then cooperation in good faith.
Which would had negative implications for democracies in rest of world too.
With respect, that’s up to my neighbors, not the government.
Not everybody cares about formal clinical trials, especially when it affects their bottom line. The global regulatory perspective is not even mentioned in the article.
In software there's things your overlook, etc... I'm guessing biological 'hacking' is the same, I'd imagine making a vaccine is similar in a lot of ways to coding - lots of trial/error, except errors = dead people.
But luckily we don’t have a binary choice. A dead vaccine is usually much safer. We can start the vaccine to high risk groups early and watch carefully, expanding access as results come in. We’ve already started clinical human trials a month ago.
There is no safe option. Every option will kill some people. Your goal is to minimize the expected number of deaths as best you can. That’s just the way it is. That may mean doing nothing OR it may mean finding a way to accelerate a vaccine program OR some combination of expanded early access with careful monitoring to stepped expansion of the treatment access.
I think this highlights the difference between risk and uncertainty. Risk is something calculable. Uncertainty is either incalculable or the error bars are so wide that it is practically incalculable.
I, for example, am willing to take a calculated risk and ride a motorcycle. It's a fun, economical way of traveling. I am not willing to ride a motorcycle I am unfamiliar with without a close inspection. Maybe an unfamiliar bike is in complete operational order. Maybe it has a crack in a frame wield and the frame may snap during normal operations. The error bars for what can go wrong on an uninspected motorcycle are too wide and it introduces a level of uncertainty I am not comfortable with.
The downsides of a bad vaccine have been shown multiple times in multiple places. It's _very_ bad. I'm unwilling to accept uncertainty when the downside is so large.
It would be naive to think that a majority of governments are primarily concerned with not hurting people, especially when stakes are high.
In which case, we don't need to shoot for herd immunity. We just need to shoot for "Hey, stupid, don't do stuff like blow your nose at the restaurant table or conference table, good god."
Plus, when you don’t need bed rest, you can still do any work that can reasonably be done from a remote location. Most companies haven’t done much to push that boundary in the past, and that’s a good idea, but it’s not a complete solution by any means.
Yeah.
But in order to enforce that, we need different sick leave and health care policies and ...stuff.
And that's very much a world I would like to see born of this mess, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Let's start on fostering them today. If we jump on it, we could flatten the curve with less economic pain this very year.
The trouble is how to achieve that without killing 10% of everyone over 50, or anyone with comorbidities.
"Even if the vaccine were available now, it would take more than a year to mass-produce it..."
"Even if the vaccine is available, it will take" is wrong because the vaccine is not available. That means you need "would" instead of "will", and ideally a past subjunctive verb in the if-clause. "If it were available, it would take time to distribute."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_conditional_sentences#...
What we need to be discussing is why we are still discussing it.
There may never be a vaccine. Anyone who says 'until a vaccine' or 'when a vaccine' is not worth talking to.
This is the first time in modern history where every developed country in the world has top researchers expediting work on a vaccine. A virus has never been the world's top economic and political issue until now. Comparing it to vaccine research on other viruses is irrelevant.