Coronavirus: Links, Discussion, Open Thread

> But even if they have it tomorrow, that's...what? Another four months for studies, one month before the FDA is able to meet to discuss an approval (you can't rush meetings!), two months to ramp up production, and five months of Distribution Hell while we argue about who should be first in line and prosecute people for distributing vaccines too quickly. So maybe by this time next year you get a vaccine against the South African strain. And by that point the virus will have just changed its password again and we'll be right back where we started.

It's highly doubtful that a full round of studies will be required to approve a new form of the COVID vaccine. We don't need that for each year's Flu vaccine, neither will we need it for each year's COVID vaccine if that proves to be necessary. Production is vastly more efficient than in past months and getting better all the time, and because vaccines can be made multivalent i.e. protecting against multiple strains and changed very quickly production should not be a significant problem in the future. Distribution is already enormously more smooth than it was a month ago and with new strains there's no reason to ramp all of that down. This article appears to be ridiculously pessimistic about future vaccine logistics.