
Why a coronavirus vaccine could take way longer than a year - pseudolus
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/why-coronavirus-vaccine-could-take-way-longer-than-a-year/
======
sharkweek
I also wonder about deployment of said vaccine.

A couple thoughts spring to mind including both your standard, “it takes a
while to get everyone in to get one of these,” coupled with a growing distrust
of expert medical advice.

A member of my own extended family is still convinced this is a giant
conspiracy by [insert flavor of the week here] to [insert flavor of the week
here]. I doubt that they get the vaccine no matter how fast it’s available.

I know the goal of vaccines isn’t realistically 100% deployment, but it feels
there is going to be some lag here too.

My hunch is a return to normalcy looks more like everyone wearing masks in
public for the next few years, with increased distancing in confined spaces
(more sweeping WFH policies!) while we wait for adoption of the vaccine.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I doubt that they get the vaccine no matter how fast it’s available."_

A lot of anti-vaxxers may start begging for or even insisting on getting the
vaccine once they see enough unvaccinated people around them dropping like
flies.

~~~
blondin
i hadn't thought about anti-vaxxers. it's true that their perspective might
change with this pandemic and if we are able to make a vaccine.

the world is indeed not going to be the same.

~~~
Marsymars
However, it's _critically_ important that we don't enable the anti-vaxxers by
rushing an unsafe vaccine.

~~~
Ohn0
True. Don't want to give anyone monkey virus or anything.

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guscost
Never gonna happen. I could be a good sport for another month, since they’re
asking nicely. Beyond that, the risk from creeping fascism quickly outpaces
the risk from any disease that fits these observations, and I don’t care if
you believe it or not. Probably half of the country won’t put up with a
shutdown for even that long.

~~~
lnreddy
I'm alarmed at the glee with which Americans are giving up their
constitutional rights and calling for more restrictions. America is not Asia,
or Europe. This is a frontier nation, and we must keep it that way.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

~~~
howlin
There are still frontier nations out there. Russia, Greenland, Outback
Australia, the Canadian Territories. Perhaps Alaska.

But the continental US is a developed land with dense cities. Your idea of
what your liberties should be don't justify the drastic externalities you will
inflict on your neighbors.

~~~
DoreenMichele
There's damn few places in the US with population density akin to Europe or
Asia.

The last big city I lived in, Fresno, is low density sprawl. The culture there
is like half a million cowboys decided to move to the suburbs. They put on
their cowboy crap to go to concerts at their major park. It's bizarre.

We also generally have shit public transit.

You cannot tell me that lock down is the only possible way to handle the
pandemic in the incredibly low average population density of most of the US.
Give me a break.

~~~
yongjik
Fresno, CA has population density of 1,761.69/km2. That's not too far from
Daegu, South Korea (2,818/km2), where 6,807 were infected so far and 142
people died. They stopped it only through really aggressive testing and
contact tracing.

I'm so tired of this America-is-so-special argument. Freaking Mississippi has
2,260 patients now. Now what?

~~~
lnreddy
"Now what ?" \- Now we practice common sense social distancing and wait for
the virus to take its course. No need to overreact and go full China style
authoritarian lockdown. And yes, America is exceptional even if it annoys you.

~~~
watwut
America is not going to adopt common sense social distancing enough to be able
to let virus run its course. That would requires massive cooperation in good
faith from both parties and most states. Looking how things go on, it won't
happen.

You are more likely to see epidemic being used to disadvantage other side, to
make voting harder for this or that group and massive amount of lies then
cooperation in good faith.

Which would had negative implications for democracies in rest of world too.

------
war1025
We don't need a vaccine specifically. We need a treatment of one form or
another that drops severity / mortality to acceptable levels. A vaccine is one
option, but far from the only.

~~~
kyriakos
Exactly this , vaccination is a long term solution, right now we just need to
turn a deadly disease into a manageable one.

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trevyn
Why coronavirus vaccine _public availability in the US_ could take way longer
than a year.

Not everybody cares about formal clinical trials, especially when it affects
their bottom line. The global regulatory perspective is not even mentioned in
the article.

~~~
tim58
In 1976 we rushed a vaccine without adequate safety tests (formal clinical
trials) and more people were hurt by the unsafe vaccine than would have been
sick without the vaccine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak)

~~~
Robotbeat
This is always a risk, but it can be a _calculated_ risk.

~~~
giantDinosaur
It would be a total disaster if the vaccine made things worse; it'd destroy
trust in governments and vaccinations and our lock-downs would have been
potentially worthless. It has to either work or we have to accept it'll take
longer and deal accordingly. The risks of getting it wrong and implementing
vaccination programs regardless are literally horrifying.

~~~
Robotbeat
A death of a vaccine or a death of COVID-19 is still a death. We should act
according to reduce the total number of deaths, taking into the probability we
could be wrong (and if you say that probability can ever be zero, then I don’t
believe you). A 0.01% chance we could kill more with the vaccine than without
is not an excuse to not deploy it IF the alternative means more likely much
higher deaths.

But luckily we don’t have a binary choice. A dead vaccine is usually much
safer. We can start the vaccine to high risk groups early and watch carefully,
expanding access as results come in. We’ve already started clinical human
trials a month ago.

~~~
giantDinosaur
The 'calculated risk' you talk of is _such_ a bad way to evaluate the risk of
a vaccine making things worse that I shudder to think of the consequences
should such an attitude be adopted. Please, just stop, and read about the
consequences of getting a vaccine wrong.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/03/27/2005456117](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/03/27/2005456117)

~~~
Robotbeat
I am aware.

~~~
giantDinosaur
Then you must be 'aware' that we _can 't_ simply calculate a probability of
whether the vaccine will be worse or not. You either take a real gamble that
it won't be, or you do the sane thing and actually observe long term effects
in trials. There's no possible way you can assign probabilities like you can a
coin flip - each vaccine and disease is far too unique and unpredictable.

~~~
Robotbeat
Actually, you are taking a giant gamble with not vaccinating as well. You can,
in fact, assign probabilities based on historical data. Epidemiologists do
this all the time. To pretend probabilities don’t work in epidemiology means
you don’t understand either probability or epidemiology.

There is no safe option. Every option _will_ kill some people. Your goal is to
minimize the expected number of deaths as best you can. That’s just the way it
is. That may mean doing nothing OR it may mean finding a way to accelerate a
vaccine program OR some combination of expanded early access with careful
monitoring to stepped expansion of the treatment access.

~~~
tim58
This conversation has stuck with me for several days, and I'd like to recap my
thoughts on it.

I think this highlights the difference between risk and uncertainty. Risk is
something calculable. Uncertainty is either incalculable or the error bars are
so wide that it is practically incalculable.

I, for example, am willing to take a calculated risk and ride a motorcycle.
It's a fun, economical way of traveling. I am not willing to ride a motorcycle
I am unfamiliar with without a close inspection. Maybe an unfamiliar bike is
in complete operational order. Maybe it has a crack in a frame wield and the
frame may snap during normal operations. The error bars for what can go wrong
on an uninspected motorcycle are too wide and it introduces a level of
uncertainty I am not comfortable with.

The downsides of a bad vaccine have been shown multiple times in multiple
places. It's _very_ bad. I'm unwilling to accept uncertainty when the downside
is so large.

------
ranDOMscripts
HN hive mind: At what point are there sufficient numbers of survivors to
establish herd immunity and get some semblance of normalcy?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I think we need to shoot for "a new normal" where better cultural germ control
practices are a more normal part of the world.

In which case, we don't need to shoot for herd immunity. We just need to shoot
for "Hey, stupid, don't do stuff like blow your nose at the restaurant table
or conference table, good god."

~~~
guscost
Or: “Don’t show up at the office sick, you’re not ‘dedicated’, you’re just an
asshole.”

~~~
dmode
I always wondered about this. For COVID, the recommendation is that you have
to be symptom free for 14 days before you are considered not contagious.
Adding another 7-10 days of actual disease, you will be asking people to take
21-24 days off for a disease ? That is simply not accepted in American
corporate culture, where many mothers return to work 2 weeks after giving
birth

~~~
guscost
Realistically, I mean symptomatic (coughing and sneezing). It’s not perfect
but people are typically most contagious while they have symptoms.

Plus, when you don’t need bed rest, you can still do any work that can
reasonably be done from a remote location. Most companies haven’t done much to
push that boundary in the past, and that’s a good idea, but it’s not a
complete solution by any means.

~~~
dmode
Are there any studies that prove that asymptomatic people are less contagious
?

------
ezoe
Even if the vaccine is available now, it took more than a year to mass-produce
it and distribute to everyone in the world.

~~~
Noumenon72
English does have a subjunctive mood for counterfactuals like this, to keep
people from thinking that you mean the vaccine actually is available or was
mass-produced in the past. The sentence would be more grammatical like this:

"Even if the vaccine were available now, it would take more than a year to
mass-produce it..."

~~~
ryanmccullagh
I think the OP may have just made a mistake. As a native speaker, his sentence
is wrong. "It took" is perfect paste tense. I think their intent was to say
"It will have taken, (future perfect), or "it will take" (simple future).

~~~
Noumenon72
"It will take" would work fine if he had said "Once the vaccine is available,
it will take...", because that doesn't imply the vaccine is available now.

"Even if the vaccine is available, it will take" is wrong because the vaccine
is _not_ available. That means you need "would" instead of "will", and ideally
a past subjunctive verb in the if-clause. "If it were available, it would take
time to distribute."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_conditional_sentences#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_conditional_sentences#Second_conditional)

------
aaron695
This was talked about and explained in January.

What we need to be discussing is why we are still discussing it.

There may never be a vaccine. Anyone who says 'until a vaccine' or 'when a
vaccine' is not worth talking to.

~~~
balola
Basically every country in the world is waiting for it, you can't
realistically expect the virus to die down itself now that it's reached every
country.

~~~
zeofig
That's all well and good, but you can't realistically expect a vaccine to be
created. It MIGHT be created, or it might not. There are many viruses for
which we've tried and failed to produce effective vaccines.

~~~
hilbertseries
Given that people survive it and then have large amount of antibodies, it
seems likely that we can create a vaccine. While some viruses are incredibly
challenging to make a vaccine for, like HIV and the flu due to the mutation
rate. The coronavirus has a slower mutation rate than the flu. It may be the
case that we end up needing yearly or every two year booster shots. But, the
most frequent stumbling block for vaccine development is funding, which won’t
be a problem for coronavirus. MERS and SARS both had promising vaccine
research that were shelved because the infections died out.

~~~
loopz
I don't have numbers, but it's mentioned that many recovered patients have low
amounts of antibodies and immunity could be more a temporary affair.

