It seems like a failure of the system that no one is trying for FDA approval or industrialization.
There are also efforts for some simple to produce vaccines underway, it's just not the ones you'll likely see used widely in industrialized countries. An example is the chinese Coronavac vaccine.
Though keep in mind making vaccines isn't just producing them, it's also running trials. It pretty much doesn't matter how cheap your production is, it will hardly affect the cost of the trial. And after all they're there so you actually know whether your vaccine works - and that part certainly shouldn't be skipped.
The big problems with COVID vaccines is making sure they are safe and effective, and logistics. The author doesn't do any of these. There is a scale difference of 7 orders of magnitude compared to what we need. And he is taking risks that would be unreasonable for a commercial vaccine and efficiency is "let's see if it does something".
It is an experiment and it has scientific value, maybe some of the mainstream vaccine candidates started out like this. But it cannot be compared to current widespread vaccination efforts.
As for the money, it is a common fallacy to think that throwing money at a problem will solve it. Same as an often seen argument "it will take $X billion to end world hunger". World hunger is solved with food, not money, people don't eat money. On a small scale, you just have to go to the grocery store and spend money to feed a starving person. On a large scale there simply not enough food available unless we do some major changes regarding agriculture and distribution, throwing in money will just cause price inflation. Same thing with vaccines.
Vaccines are similar: vaccinating the world will be logistically very very hard. But vaccinating first-world countries is a lot easier, and supply of vaccine in rich countries absolutely is a problem that can be solved with more money and resources. The fact that we've had so much trouble solving it is a political problem.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/niQ3heWwF6SydhS7R/making-vac...
Of what?
Edit: I get it now, sorry. I think FDA approval would bump up the price quite a bit.
Sorry for being brief as it would take a more in depth hour explanation of why the difference in effectiveness..
CDC had a recent article on the differences between this approach and the approach they and pharms chose namely mRNA
Not true. Novavax is just peptides and is 96% effective against the original Wuhan covid-19 strain.