Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway2245 | Hacker News Reader

A randomly controlled challenge trial would involve deliberately infecting scores of unvaccinated people, putting them at risk, along with anyone involved in the procedure and anyone they come into contact.

It would mean handling live virus, which requires a Biosafety Level 3 facilities.

And, it's not going to get your vaccine approved any quicker.

View on HN

See, this is a classic example. You need BSL3 facilities if you want to have a hundred people have it. But the alternative is 27 million people getting it in planes, boats, and buses - none of which are BSL3. That part is okay.

Quite the example of the asymmetry. If you engage with the problem you have to operate absolutely perfectly. Way better not to engage with it and kill a few hundred thousand people. After all, no one can blame you for that part.

And of course it's not going to get the vaccine 'approved' quicker because yeah, 'approval' is also subject to the same people. But it will let us know if it works and whether it hurts.

> You need BSL3 facilities if you want to have a hundred people have it. But the alternative is 27 million people getting it in planes, boats, and buses - none of which are BSL3.

Those things are not true alternatives.

I said "it's not going to get your vaccine approved any quicker" in the hope that you would understand: vaccines have reached the point of global distribution without doing the additional deliberate harm of intentionally infecting people.

Well, we've taken your approach and killed 300k in the process, so I guess we could play at being tankies in the '90s and say "If only the Communism were properly done" or we could revisit the approach.

Of course I am healthy, my family has had the vaccine or the disease and punched through, so I don't really care all that much.

FDA still hasn't authorized the AZ vaccine

Other countries have, though, and they don't have millions of doses waiting for approval or factories waiting to spin up production.

The bottleneck has generally been manufacturing rather than approval so far. It may shift to distribution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com