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Comment by sgt101 | Hacker News Reader

An important fact that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is that 3m doses have been manufactured already and are available in the UK supply chain today. "All" that's required is the approval from the regulator - but I guess that is still a little way off. 3m would do a lot of good though - frontline staff, the most vulnerable, hotspots....

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India has already made 40m and is ramping up to 100m

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-13/india-to-...

The Gates Foundation has been capital-sharing with Indian manufacturers to get more vaccine into 3rd world.

Were any doses produced yet of the other two vaccines?

At least in the US, it seems so:

> Currently, OWS is working with 11 drug manufacturing companies to produce 800 million doses of six different COVID-19 vaccines, five of which are in Phase III clinical trials. By prepurchasing and premanufacturing these vaccines prior to approval, the vaccine distribution plan can be activated and supplies delivered within 24 hours of any of the vaccines receiving FDA approval.

https://college.acaai.org/updates-on-covid-19-vaccine-distri...

BioNTech/Pfizer plan to deliver 50 million doses by the end of the year.

https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

I am not sure : I know the other vaccines must be stored at a very low temperature, but does anyone know how long they can be stored for at all?

Up to six months.

3m worth of working vaccines would do a lot of good, the problem is we aren't sure it works (or even that it doesn't harm you or make you more susceptible)

More data required - and then approval, I hope.

But you are right, today we don't have all of that information.

Except that literally all of the data so far says "it works and is safe".

"Literally all the data" that's been collected on the impact of me not picking my nose shows that it prevents covid

This does not mean that by not picking your nose you can prevent covid

We would need more data to show that conclusively

Simiarly, we need more data to show that these vaccines are effective and don't have negative long-term effects

Efficacy has been proven to a high enough degree of certainty that these vaccines are now being submitted for approval. Safety was largely proven in Phase 1/2 trials (before tens of thousands of people were injected with the stuff for Phase 3 trials). And all signs continue to show the vaccine to be safe (and data will continue to be collected for at least a year or two for the various Phase 3 trials).

Maybe "you" need more data for whatever concept you have in your head of how this should work. However, within the scientific community involved with developing and approving these vaccines, the data we have is sufficient (pending review of course).

If the data we have is sufficient, then why hasn't it been approved yet?

The data was literally just released.

Moderna and Pfizer submitted for approval shortly after they released their initial Phase 3 results. Approval is expected to be expedited, but will not be instant (I've read a few weeks, assuming no problems). Oxford/AstraZeneca will likely follow the same course now that their results are available (they were waiting for enough people in their trials to become infected, same as the other Phase 3 trials).

It is widely expected that large scale distribution of these vaccines will begin in late December.

Wait, so was the data just released or has the scientific community had enough time to analyze these results and determine that the vaccine is safe?

Is this some attempt at a "gotcha"? It's all over the news, I'm sure you can Google it. CDC Director just said first vaccines should got out second week of December.

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