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Comment by deeeeplearning | Hacker News Reader

Lol you vastly overestimate the capabilities of the US Gov and Military. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if you can't get a dose if you want one until well into 2021.

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The US military is (to make up a number) 85% logistics. Supply chain management is the one thing they absolutely excel at. We can move troops and keep them supplied even in the most remote, most dangerous areas of the world. It's what the military does.

What makes you say this, other than a knee-jerk 'US-bad'?

What part of that 85% usually transports stuff at -80C?

They have the manpower and logistics in place yes, but you still need special equipment keep it at temperature.

Equipment can be bought. Cooling containers are not only available for every mode of transportation, they are standard and people handle them daily, even for air freight.

Good news: A 463L pallet is a 463L pallet, and the military plans this stuff out long in advance: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN1858...

Other Good news: The cold transport requirement has been a known requirement since beginning of development, for at least the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. And the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been among the leading candidates since March.

Well the government has handled logistics related to covid horribly so far. They were completely unable to distribute tests, even months after there were tens of millions stockpiled. They were similarly bad at distributing PPE. They couldn't even get toilet paper distributed properly. Of course there are major differences here, but I don't have a lot of faith.

Was the military given this task?

Government != military. The military has its own logistics command that, like the parent comment mentions, is unbelievably well tuned. Vaccines are something they do extremely well-- every sailor, soldier and airman in the entire 5 arm military needs regular vaccinations, even when deployed. Can't have GI Joe catching a flu, giving to the rest of the battalion only to sitout the rest of the conflict. All the stuff you need to safely distribute a vaccine, they've got, and know how to use it. Things like a chain of custody to keep cold things cold, and SLAs to meet perishable goods requirements, transport and delivery from remote locations with little infrastructure, the command and management to ensure enough supply gets to where it needs to be, etc. From what my friends who served in the Navy & Air Force said, they don't fuck around with vaccines. You get lined up, jabbed or misted with the vaccine and sent on your way. There's no reason they can't scale up from hundreds of thousands of soldiers to millions of civilians.

Ah, yes, I remember the days of pneumatic vaccines. Can get a lot of people vaccinated in a hurry that way.

You probably won't get a dose until late 2021. This is because you are probably not in a high risk area where you can't isolate effectively. The first shots will go to doctors/nurses, moving down a risk scale. Next is up for debate.

I'm sure my company will do everything they can to ensure factory and retail workers will be next. Factory because shutting down our factory would be a disaster to our finances. Retail because all employees who are supposed to not go anywhere still get groceries, so protecting those workers reduces are contact. The the CEO is next, probably only slightly above the rest of us office workers who can stay home.

I'm fine not getting a dose for months because I'm not in a high-risk group, and not working with high-risk individuals.

If we can vaccinate hospital workers and high-risk individuals, that will already make fatalities go down very quickly. That will help us get out of confinement faster.

The problem is that "late 2021" is a date you just made up. The people deeply involved in vaccine development are talking about Spring and Summer of 2021 for a return to normalcy, with widespread vaccinations starting before the end of Winter. This is from people are Oxford, Moderna, various governmental health agencies, including our own reliably conservative Fauci. Where do you get "late 2021" from?

I made a somewhat educated guess. I'm not as educated as the people you name, but they too are just guessing. I'm trying to be reasonable though, and I don't have any reason to spread an optimistic hope.

If this is the only vaccine that passes trails - well they can't make it fast enough for a late 2021 opener. If some of the others also pass trails then early 2021 is a possibility (so long as you don't have some reason to prefer a specific vaccine as opposed to whatever you can get first)

>The people deeply involved in vaccine development are talking about Spring and Summer of 2021 for a return to normalcy

Any update on this figure? I'm seeing a lotta different stances

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