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Comment by dharma1 | Hacker News Reader

Anecdote - I had a small amount of money invested in SME lending through an online p2p lending platform since last year (UK). Not super high interest rates, about 6-8%, all "AAA" rated businesses. Before covid, default rates were a couple of percent.

Right now 25% of the businesses in the loan book are late with repayments, I expect many of them will default and stop trading. And this is while government subsidies are still going - the subsidies will soon stop.

Covid has been devastating for small businesses which don't operate online and unfortunately I think the fallout will continue up to a year, until we get mass vaccination.

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> until we get mass vaccination

FUD is already spreading among the gullible about the coming vaccines, and I wish I was confident that it'll be a negligible percentage who believe the fake news

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/22/bill-gates-denies-conspiracy...

It's also optimistic that a vaccine for this virus is even possible or likely in our lifetimes. No member of the coronavirus family has yet to succumb to a vaccine in mass trials, and it is a large family with decades of attempts.

(I love the counter optimism that if we succeed with a coronavirus vaccine we have a likelihood to vaccinate against nearly a third of the common cold and it can join the flu as something if we'd all annually vaccinate would trouble us a lot less. But pessimism worries that is a big if.)

Actually it seems that a few large scale trials are starting, and Dr. Fauci was optimistic for November

The fastest vaccine our species has successfully made took 5 years of trials. November is beyond the traditional definition of "optimistic" by an order of magnitude.

I want to believe in a November miracle, but pessimism says to curb our enthusiasm (greatly). (Also, it is probably mostly a "coincidence" Dr. Fauci's job currently requires him to say everything will be better by November because of pressure from a certain election cycle.)

Indeed, that would be fast, but maybe the virus is in a category we have already seen and created vaccines for before.

There seems to be already about 6 large scale tests in progress in the world (ie. after lab/animal/small group), that's a good sign.

Anyway, I don't see much reason for Dr. Fauci to make such kind of statement if it was still really years away.

The tests will tell where we are, we'll see in a month or two.

> Indeed, that would be fast, but maybe the virus is in a category we have already seen and created vaccines for before.

I pointed this out two comments up, but the coronavirus family is common enough that something like 1/3 of the causes of the Common Cold is a coronavirus (the rest IIRC are a different family known as rhinoviruses). We've never managed a Common Cold vaccine or vaccines despite something like a century of work (at least as long as we've been fighting annual flu season with flu vaccines). In the immediate past couple of decades we've seen an increasing number of deadly coronaviruses: the first SARS virus (this being the second), the MERS virus, basically several of the things in the last few years people have been referring to by possibly misnomers like "avian flu" and "swine flu" have been in this family and so forth. So far we've not been successful in creating a vaccine for any of those. No coronavirus in human history has a vaccine, and there is a lot of history with the family (contrary to whatever racist and/or "animal jumping" theories people have that this is something very radically new; it's a "very uncommon cold").

On the hopeful side, Science often builds strongly on failure, and so it could be that we are perfectly set up for a breakthrough from all of this history of vaccine failure. (And again, I pointed out two comments above the hopeful optimism that a coronavirus vaccine puts us on a wonderful path to possible a common cold vaccine. That could be amazing for future humanity.)

Just that history so far with this entire family/category of viruses doesn't give us a lot of room for hope right now.

The USA can't even get enough needles to vaccinate everyone once, not to mention those who need needles for medicine. The only way forward is to have dumb people behave like they aren't complete dipshits. That won't happen. This same shit happened with the Spanish Flu. VE day was responsible for the largest outbreak because of parades and parties. Wonder what will get them to congregate this time. Probably a mix of rioting and fascism.

> VE day was responsible for the largest outbreak because of parades and parties.

VE Day was two and a half decades after the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Armistice Day my bad, either way Germany lost

I love the work Bill Gates is doing, I'm pro vaccine, and there's no way in hell I'm getting the COVID vaccine before sometime late 2021. I want to see long-term results before I take my chances with a fast-tracked vaccine. I suspect that there are lots of other folks with the same mindset.

Vladimir Putin allegedly made his own daughter take the vaccine.

I don't know if that is true. Maybe just a lie to make the public believe it is safe.

It's a very understandable mindset and I tend to sympathize with it. On the other hand, fast-tracked does not necessarily mean less safe.

As far as my understanding for clinical trials goes, we can still have the exact same tests with the exact same criteria and quality but still speed up the overall process. Simply by eliminating the default waterfall and accepting higher financial risk. (Also higher medical risk, but only within the trials, not for the end-product).

Usually, one would run the various trials strictly in order:

    trial_stage = 0;
    while (trial_stage < 4)
       execute(trial_stage)
       if (evaluate(trial_stage) == success)
         trial_stage++
    do

Under pressure, we can start the next stage while the previous one is not finished yet. This means higher financial risk, as you are investing already into stage II even if you do not know if stage I will in the end be successful. This also implies higher medical risk for stage II but this risk stays within the trials.

My main worry is that there may be longer term effects which are not apparent for a year or more. There doesn't seem to be a way to ensure long term effects are absent besides conducting a long term test. I'll happily get my flu shot this year though, so perhaps I'm being a bit hypocritical.

Well, I'm sitting here with long term effects from covid itself (difficulty breathing from smoke from the forest fires.) If I was to live my life over again, I'd take the risk from the vaccine.

Well sure, but I'd rather just not get covid in the first place. Given that I'll be WFH until at least January, that seems like an attainable goal. Front-line/essential workers have a more complicated calculus to ponder.

> before sometime late 2021. I want to see long-term results before I take my chances with a fast-tracked vaccine.

Theses no way there will be a vaccine pushed out before late 2021. That's an optimistic start

Maybe, maybe high risk workers might start larger rollouts mid next year. But even if it's true their vaccine might not even be the one you might be offered.

Being high risk workers you'll also know little since you won't be able to sort danger between the vaccine and their work.

At your safety level you are asking for late 2022 would be an early option. But then the risk from C19 might lower, so you'll have to reassess then.

I doubt most people will get the vaccine.

I understand this sentiment, but the more people think this way, the longer it takes to safely get to herd immunity, so there is a massive tradeoff happening here.

No, herd immunity is already happening anyway via natural vaccination, i.e. people getting it. There's no actual need for a vaccine. Case numbers are falling in many areas again, even after a round of opening ups.

By now the vaccine has clearly shifted in purpose from a medical one to a primarily psychological one. For people who are wedded to lockdowns and can't admit how disastrous they are, a vaccine is a face-saving exit criteria. It comes with the bonus of more top-down control of the population too!

Yes this is a worry. Together with the possibility of early vaccines having significantly less than 70% efficacy

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