
U.S. Government official: Coronavirus vaccine trial starts Monday - filleokus
https://apnews.com/8089a3d0ec8f9fde971bddd7b3aa2ba1
======
jaaames
I am extremely bearish on this whole global situation, but given the gravity
of the situation, we're going to see the world's best institutions and minds
working on vaccines and treatments with essentially unlimited funding and top
priority.

Even during our darkest times, we're going to see the most remarkable science
and engineering capabilities exposed in the coming weeks and months, for the
sake of humanity.

~~~
dmix
Reading about Russia sending rockets to Venus in the 1960-70s [1], then later
watching a documentary about the Viking program [2], was one of the things
that cheered me up the most during this whole thing.

Humans have done amazing things in the face of dire odds. Nothing brings them
together like these sorts of challenges.

Since then I've been reading a book called "The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs"
and there's been so many extinction events, yet life still bounced back each
time stronger than before. Looking at life on that timescale, what humans
managed to accomplish in such a short one doesn't get enough praise. We've
only scratched the surface on how much better we could be as a species.

I'm confident we'll be far better prepared for the next epidemic and at the
very least hopefully China (and others like Vietnam) will eventually ban the
wildlife trade for medicine as well, not just for food. Which is what early
results by scientists are pointing to as the cause of this whole thing
(Pangolins trafficked for Chinese medicine). Animal conservation plays an
underrated role in epidemics, same with Ebola (monkeys) and SARS (bats). We
don't need to be consuming any of this stuff.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlnM6kd3_n8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlnM6kd3_n8)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV_xPQrQEyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV_xPQrQEyc)

~~~
bonestamp2
> we'll be far better prepared for the next epidemic

I agree. Being in California, it's a standing recommendation to maintain extra
supplies in case of impact from wildfire or earthquake. So, I thought I was
pretty well prepared. I already stock and rotate extra water, toilet paper,
n95 masks, canned food, etc. But, I discovered some holes in my preparedness
that I will rectify when the stores are back to normal supply levels -- I will
be even better prepared for the next state of emergency.

I'm sure the preparedness will go wide and deep across many government and
private organizations. At a minimum, I hope the CDC ensures there are plenty
more ventilators ready for the next one.

~~~
ncallaway
"At a minimum, I hope the CDC ensures there are plenty more ventilators ready
for the next one."

My only thought here is that we don't know that "the next one" will require
ventilators. While I'd certainly like to see our national stockpile of PPE and
emergency equipment like ventilators improved, I'd like to see the CDC
preparing to face a wider-set of the "next one".

I think we should be looking at our manufacturing infrastructure and ability
to rapidly ramp-up the production of _any_ life-saving hospital equipment in
the face of a sudden need. With a national stockpile that's strong enough to
cover the ramp-up period.

~~~
yannis
Besides this, the world not just the US need standby health personnel in a
similar fashion to armies. Soldiers do nothing unless needed, a "health
workers" army can do the same.

~~~
jfk13
How much extra tax do you think people will be happy to pay -- forever, not
just now while we have a pandemic on our hands -- to support this?

~~~
jerf
You question contains an implication in it that all current other tax spending
will not be reduced, and that "pandemic preparedness" will have to be added to
the current load.

If this goes really badly in the next couple of weeks or months, that's not
going to be a true assumption. A changed nation is going to be looking at its
spending priorities and a lot of reassessing will be done. Predicting exactly
what the result will be is difficult, but predicting that there could be a lot
of _change_ is not.

If we cross the logistic curve's inflection point today, then this may
ultimately blow over and be remembered as an inconvenience (and, humans being
humans, an overreaction). If this continues on for much longer and kills
hundreds of thousands and (based on some of the nasty stuff I've read about)
permanently damages the lungs of millions more or other such things, causing
disability and long-tail mortality increases for the next 50 years, this will
be a generation-defining event comparable to the Great Depression, and the
usually-reliable "tomorrow will be mostly like today" prediction methodology
will catastrophically break down in the next couple of months.

~~~
calvinmorrison
I guess the implication that the US military and also non discretionary fund
won't be reduced based on the last 50 years of data is probably a status quo
bet.

------
user9086754
There's another new (as in just a few years old new) and fascinating technique
for making vaccines that hasn't received much publicity. It's a general
technique that can be quickly applied to any pathogen. It was recently used to
develop a vaccine against Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus (VEEV), was
used to vaccinate mice against staph, and is also being tried against new
strains of polio emerging in India.

Here's an excerpt from paper about VEEV summarizing the technique's mechanism:

 _...a disease-causing organism (pathogen) can be exposed to gamma radiation
in the presence of a Deinococcus Mn complex, and rendered non-replicative
(killed) by overwhelming genetic damage, but still maintain the shape of key
surface proteins needed to mount a highly protective immune response._

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530122345.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530122345.htm)

I think this could have the potential to develop a cure but isn't receiving
any attention from our (dysfunctional) government (who also happens to own the
patents on it!).

~~~
program_whiz
I heard that killed virus vaccines from corona viruses can actually lead to a
cytokine storm and higher mortality rate in those innoculated with it. There's
a reason we don't have general vaccines for the common cold. During some
previous corona related outbreaks (SARS, MERS) there was an attempt at using
this method, but it actually has a backlash effect when the person is exposed
to the virus.

~~~
bluGill
We do have a vaccine for the common cold. Problem is the common cold is really
about 300 different viruses, and a vaccine for just one of them didn't make a
statistical difference.

------
forkexec
The rationale against mass inoculation with an untested vaccine stems
partially from the botched 1976 Fort Dix swine flu H1N1 outbreak and vaccine.
The volunteers of successive regular clinical trial phases play Russian
roulette on our behalf, and this takes time.

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

~~~
lvs
And this comapny's particular approach to vaccination has never been approved
for any indication. I can't imagine why this company would be considered a
first-line relative to classical approaches to vaccination (inactivated,
attenuated live, made by recombinant hen egg, etc., etc.) that we roll out
regularly and successfully.

~~~
bluGill
All approaches need to be considered at this time because we don't know which
if any will work. We also don't know what the side effects of the ones that
will work might be.

When we get farther along in testing we will have more information and should
re-evaluate. Maybe something will prove to work well (we can do a new flu shot
in a few months because we have approved the process to create a new one),
maybe everything else will fail. Maybe this will fail. We don't have enough
useful information to work with now though.

~~~
lvs
You say these things like you know something about the field. In fact, we're
talking about a technology for vaccination that is far less likely to work
than many tried and true ones. It has never been FDA approved for anything.

~~~
bluGill
That doesn't mean that it won't work, or that the others will work. If the
others turn out to work and because they are more tried in general great, but
right now all approaches are worth exploring

------
jussij
From this link:

[https://news.yahoo.com/government-official-coronavirus-
vacci...](https://news.yahoo.com/government-official-coronavirus-vaccine-
trial-232640596.html)

 _Even if initial safety tests go well, “you’re talking about a year to a year
and a half” before any vaccine could be ready for widespread use, according to
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases._

So even if these trials go well that suggests a vaccine is a long way down the
road.

~~~
ManlyBread
Given how serious the situation is worldwide I suspect that there will be at
least an attempt to speed things out as much as possible. I would be surprised
if it actually would end up being a year and a half.

~~~
0xffff2
I'm not an expert at all, but my understanding of the articles I've read is
that 1-1.5 years _is_ sped up quite a bit. 2-3 years would be more typical.

~~~
partiallypro
It definitely is, but if the entire global economy is still at a standstill in
3 months, I have no doubt the government will speed it up even more.

------
radu_floricica
I really hope people will take a more "effective altruism" approach to those
18 months with all the people dying. I'm guessing just with logistic and
bureaucratic prioritizing we can shave 6 months (somebody mentioned above that
it takes months just to set up testing with the large number of volunteers.
Sure, normally it does, but definitely not today).

Beyond that we can probably cut another 6 months with judicious strategizing.
Have certain populations defined that are high risk and high exposure - like
elderly health care professionals - and start using the vaccine before the
approval is complete. You might actually mix this with early testing and have
the volunteers be actual beneficiaries. This way you get efficiency results
from the field - it's trivial to implement a double blind and measure
infection rates.

Lots of things can be done, if one is willing to look at the letter of the
rule and re-think if it's applicable now.

------
shartshooter
key line

 _Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully
validate any potential vaccine_

~~~
m0zg
If 100K people start dying monthly, that'll be down to 3 months, and "fully
validate" will be replaced with "hail Mary" and "pray to Jesus".

~~~
e12e
You can't magically whish vaccine into working. The controls aren't there in
order to maximize the delay for when vaccines can be deployed.

A bad batch could essentially equal to purposefully infecting people with the
disease, for example.

Ed: i don't see it mentioned explicitly: while young people might reasonably
volunteer to be vaccinated and exposed to the virus - we really need to
vaccinate the elderly and at risk - who has a high mortality rate. We might
get volunteers, but it's still different to sign up for a 50/50 shot at death,
than the risk of two weeks of mild flu...

And we probably do need to test for adverse effects in the at risk population
too.

~~~
Someone1234
> A bad batch could essentially equal to purposefully infecting people with
> the disease, for example.

Nope, impossible. mRNA based vaccines don't use a weakened version of the
virus to train the body:

> [0]The use of mRNA has several beneficial features over subunit, killed and
> live attenuated virus, as well as DNA-based vaccines. First, safety: as mRNA
> is a non-infectious, non-integrating platform, there is no potential risk of
> infection or insertional mutagenesis. Additionally, mRNA is degraded by
> normal cellular processes, and its in vivo half-life can be regulated
> through the use of various modifications and delivery methods

To use a bad analogy mRNA based vaccines train the body using a "signature" of
the virus, essentially skipping the first step of actual infection and jumping
to the second/third steps where the body's previously exposed to antigens are
generated. It is an entirely new form of vaccine that has worked in trails
before.

Which isn't to say it is 100% safe for other reasons. I'd say auto-immune
reactions are the biggest risk (e.g. the body using the signature encoded to
attack the body itself).

[0][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906799/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906799/)

~~~
ignoramous
> _Which isn 't to say it is 100% safe for other reasons. I'd say auto-immune
> reactions are the biggest risk (e.g. the body using the signature encoded to
> attack the body itself)._

Out of curiousity, why couldn't potential auto-immune response be simulated on
a computer up to a degree of confidence, if nothing? Would quantum computers
drastically rid of current computing related handicaps wrt to simulating a
large search space typical of such simulations? What role might yet the recent
resurgence in deep-learning play for immediate future?

~~~
jerf
"Out of curiousity, why couldn't potential auto-immune response be simulated
on a computer up to a degree of confidence, if nothing?"

Basically every answer you could imagine to that question is true. We don't
understand the system well enough to simulate it at that level of detail. We
don't have the computational power to do it if we did. If we did have aliens
from space deliver to us both the power and the simulation, we'd have a
difficult time verifying the validity of the simulation!

Quantum computing is still not well-understood enough to know if it's helpful;
there's a certain barrier of "what can it actually do" that we won't really
understand until we have them, and we start raising up quantum programmers. No
slam against the theorists intended, it's just the difference between "the
halting problem is unsolvable" and "here's a program for calculating payroll"
is small in theory but large in practice. We won't really know what they can
_do_ until we work with them for a while.

------
cromulent
I found 5 trials, four of which are recruiting:

[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=Corona+Virus+Inf...](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=Corona+Virus+Infection&term=vaccine&strd_s=01%2F01%2F2020&strd_e=07%2F12%2F2022&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=&Search=Search)

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> _Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully
> validate any potential vaccine._

Why?

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I'm not a professional vaccine researcher, but I can only imagine you want to
validate 1. that the vaccine is effective and 2. that the vaccine doesn't
cause everyone who takes it to get an aneurysm six months later. These things
have to be pipelined. You don't want to inject 10k people with something
you've only tested on 45. You don't want to inject 45 with something you
haven't tested on animals. You don't want to stop the 10k person trial too
early in case if there is a longer term side effect you missed. You don't want
to start manufacturing billions of doses until your 10k trial is done. Etc.

~~~
refurb
As someone who works in the industry, you pretty much covered it.

If you dose people with a new vaccine, you’ll need to monitor them 6 months at
a minimum. 12 months would be better.

It takes 3 months to nail down the protocol and for all the sites to be ready.
Then you start recruiting and for a vaccine, you’d want a large population
(reflects usage). So assume 6 months to recruit 1000 people. They don’t all
start at the same time, so if you’re tracking for 6 months, it will probably
take 9 monthsfor the last person to finish the trial.

Then you need to analyze all the data you collected, so another 3 months. Then
the FDA takes 3 months to review and approve.

There is a TON of work that goes into running a clinical trial.

~~~
WalterBright
But it does sound like if there's priority and fear, much time could be saved.
For example, "6 months to recruit 1000 people". I suspect in this case, a week
can work.

> Then you need to analyze all the data you collected, so another 3 months.

Help me understand this. You vaccinate 1000 people. In 6 months, the number of
them that get sick is 10% of the rate of the unvaccinated. 0.1% have a bad
reaction. How much more analysis do you need?

> the FDA takes 3 months to review and approve

How much time if that is moved to the front of the queue and all hands work on
it? Given how enormously disruptive the coronavirus is, we cannot afford to
not have all hands working on it.

~~~
refurb
Let's tackle recruitment. I've seen trials recruit really fast and that took a
month. It's not like someone says "hey I'd like to take part in this trial"
and you give them a shot of drug. You need to screen everyone who comes in.
Basic labs, then make sure they don't have some other disease that will mess
up the results. That's just one part of it.

Then in terms of the trial, 6 months would be nice, but it wouldn't be ethical
to actually expose them to the virus. You'd simply need to recruit a very
large number of patients and see if the treatment groups has less disease than
the non-treated group. With infection rates pretty low across the entire
population, you'd need to recruit thousands, just to capture the handful that
actually get exposed.

Then when it comes to analysis, you need to clean the data (yes, there will be
errors), then you need to do a statistical analysis of not only efficacy but
every possible side effect. You're probably measuring things like viral
shedding, so that's another entire dataset. Oh, then you'll have missing data.
Do you toss that patient's data out entirely? Or keep them? What impact does
that have on your conclusion?

I could go on and on, but suffice to say it's a ton of work. And yes, you can
speed up some parts, but other parts you just have to let them run their
course.

~~~
WalterBright
> Let's tackle recruitment. I've seen trials recruit really fast and that took
> a month. It's not like someone says "hey I'd like to take part in this
> trial" and you give them a shot of drug. You need to screen everyone who
> comes in. Basic labs, then make sure they don't have some other disease that
> will mess up the results.

You could do that time-consuming screening after they get the trial vaccine,
not before. After all, I suspect it is highly unlikely that a virus vaccine
would give someone a bacterial disease or a genetic disorder.

Also, before the 6 month trial is up, you're still going to have data
trickling in that will give a good indication whether it's working or not.

Source: I saw the movie "Contagion" and learned that a vaccine is considered
safe and effective based on one monkey not getting sick. I believe everything
celebrities tell me.

~~~
refurb
_You could do that time-consuming screening after they get the trial vaccine,
not before. After all, I suspect it is highly unlikely that a virus vaccine
would give someone a bacterial disease or a genetic disorder._

Ok. So let’s say you give the vaccine and run the tests later. This person’s
white blood cell count is way above normal.

Is that caused by the vaccine? Was it something else? Was it always there? You
have no idea because you didn’t capture a baseline.

The challenge of clinical trials is you don’t know what to expect, and you’re
measuring effects on top all the stuff that’s happening in the background with
completely healthy people.

The goal is to capture as much data as possible so you can actually draw
conclusions from it. Otherwise you’re left thinking “it’s probably the drug,
but I’m not sure”.

~~~
WalterBright
> The goal is to capture as much data as possible

Normally, yes. But this isn't normally - here the goal is to get a vaccine as
quickly as possible.

For example, white blood cell counts. Draw the blood, set it aside, inject the
vaccine. Then get around to testing the blood. You save what, a week that way?
That's a big deal.

Based on your descriptions, it seems that a lot of time can be saved by doing
things concurrently rather than serially.

~~~
megous
We had "if programmers build a plane". Maybe it's time for "if programmers run
a vaccine development" video. Lol.

~~~
WalterBright
What can be done without bureaucracy:

"Although far behind, the United States did work hard to get a jet into the
air during the war. Lockheed was engaged to build a jet fighter, using the
British De Havilland Goblin engine. Speed was called for, and Lockheed gave
Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson full authority for the project. He set up his
special unit, the famous “Skunk Works,” with 23 engineers and 105 shop men,
and he did 96 percent of his own fabrication and all inspection. Lockheed's
normal development procedure of engineering conferences was by-passed; only
700 drawings were made; sometimes parts were made from a drawing, and
sometimes the reverse was done: simplicity was Johnson's keynote. The XP-80
cost only 63 percent of the XP-38 prototype, which had been made by the
customary system of development. It was accepted by the AAF only 143 days
after the start of development, even though the engine had not been on hand
until the 132nd day. After General Electric had designed an improved Whittle-
type engine, the 1-40 or J33, the XP-80A was designed around it: the United
States had a jet fighter and one of the best aeronautical designs in its
history by the end of 1945."

"The most telling criticism of massed-manpower engineering practices is the
record of the “Skunk Works.” Starting with the XF-80, this technique has been
used periodically by Lockheed's Kelly Johnson to produce the U-2, the JetStar
business jet, and the A-11 (F-12). The XF-80, it will be recalled, used 23
engineers and was designed in 143 days; the U-2 also used 23 engineers and
took 80 days; the JetStar used 41 engineers and took 241 days; Johnson used
135 engineers to build the A-11, which was designed to go over Mach 3 at 20
miles high. This contrasts with the 3,500 engineers used to build North
American's XB-70, which went Mach 3 at 15 miles high. Although it must be
acknowledged that none of these aircraft are large, the XF-80, the U-2, and
the A-11 all pushed beyond the state of the art, and the repeated success of
the “Skunk Works” shows that effectiveness of the system is no fluke."

"The Jetmakers" by Charles Bright (yes, my dad)

Think about it - 23 engineers and 80 days for the U2. Kelly Johnson knew how
to get things done.

~~~
megous
I accept the ingenuity of people.

Though, if 1% of your planes have issue that causes them to stop working
midflight after 1 year, at worst you'll lose a few pilots and fix the issue by
inspecting rest of the planes.

Backtracking and fixing issues after giving a vaccine to millions of people is
a bit more problematic. Not just technically, but also in gaining the trust
back, etc.

~~~
WalterBright
You balance the risk of the vaccine against the certainty of people dying
without it.

------
m23khan
best of luck to USA - Hopefully coronavirus situation gets resolved ASAP. I
have a feeling as humanity battles this virus, we will see the best of every
nation.

Good luck to all!

------
ztjio
One of my biggest concerns is that they mean well and rush these vaccine
trials as having a vaccine very soon would be IMMENSELY VALUABLE.

But the fear part is that they screw up, people get hurt, and the anti-vaxxers
dominate the conversation which leads to broader fear of vaccines and a vastly
worse outcome overall for the foreseeable future.

I would not envy anyone who has to make such decisions right now. And I would
respect the process as it is, rather than be angry at it, because vaccines are
overall some of the safest medicine in the history of medicine and that's
really important to getting people to use them.

------
Angostura
> Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully
> validate any potential vaccine.

About the same length of time that experts were originally saying that it
would take to get it out - unless they corners, I suppose.

~~~
mrfusion
I’d love to see a breakdown of the “18 months”.

If nothing else let’s ramp up production in parallel with testing. If it
doesn’t work out we lose some time and money which isn’t a big deal in a
crisis.

~~~
aneutron
That's assuming nothing needs to be changed in the formula (I'm no chemist,
excuse my ignorance).

But logically, if these tests show that somehow it needs to be tweaked, you're
practically throwing out funding that could otherwise go towards developing
better candidates.

~~~
comicjk
If funding for these projects is the problem, our society is even more short-
sighted than I thought. We should be throwing money at them. I would be more
worried about underlying physical constraints, like a shortage of
manufacturing throughput.

------
fg6hr
If there are about 100k infected in the US today and this number grows 10x per
week, we are 1 month from the entire country being infected. With 20%
requiring hospitalization, it will be a blood bath. There will be nobody to
benefit from this vaccine.

~~~
originalbryan2
The rate is increasing, it's slightly worse. It's looking really really really
bad. The vaccine's purpose will be to stop this from happening yearly for the
rest of human history.

------
0xff00ffee
This makes me wonder: what happened to the Zika, MERS and SARS vaccines? Did
researches give up because the virus(es) were mitigated?

~~~
mu_killnine
Basically, yes.

Here's an excellent Planet Money article I heard yesterday going over this
issue: [https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815307821/planet-money-why-
th...](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815307821/planet-money-why-the-market-
for-emergency-vaccines-is-like-no-other)

At least in the US, there's a policy of 'creating' a market for vaccines for
these potential outbreaks in order to incentivize industry to research and
produce them.

------
Causality1
"Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully
validate any potential vaccine."

That makes a lot of sense for a vaccine against, say, chickenpox, or anything
else that kills a hundred or a thousand people a year. For something that, at
a 3% fatality rate, is about to kill nine million people in this country
alone, it's suicidally slow.

~~~
gnulinux
What's the alternative? Let it pass without sufficient test and possibly kill
some people?

~~~
Causality1
If you can prove it will save more people than it will kill, yes. That's
difficult when you have to prove a safety margin of 99.9%. Proving a safety
margin of 97% is much faster.

------
IIAOPSW
The same species that invented youtube also makes youtube comments. Keep that
in mind.

~~~
mgolawala
It has always been the case that 1% of humanity pulls the other 99% forward.
We do not need everyone to be a genius. We just need one.

We do not need everyone to be Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi, or
Michelangelo, or Bach or Einstein, or Shakespeare, or Newton or Galileo we
just need to be smart enough to recognize when one of them is born amongst us.
We've not always been good at that.. but we've been getting better at it.

~~~
rjzzleep
> It has always been the case that 1% of humanity pulls the other 99% forward.
> We do not need everyone to be a genius. We just need one.

This is such a ridiculous hero praising statement. It's also completely wrong.

While we love to hero worship, none of these heroes worked in isolation or
without correspondence with others. Be it their teacher, peers they were
having letter relationships with, their partners, their students or other
people.

~~~
adrianN
1% of humanity is something like 75 million people. That's plenty of people to
correspond and work together with.

~~~
xbmcuser
1% is actually now about 90 million as the world population currently
approximated at around 9 Billion. And increasing by around 90-100Mil a year

~~~
TJSomething
Where did you get that number? The United Nations thinks that we're going to
hit 8 billion by around 2023 and 9 billion by about 2037 [0].

[0]
[https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/](https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/)

------
jamesrcole
I worry that _headlines_ like this will lead to complacency amongst certain
parts of the population.

They'll think a vaccine will be here soon.

I imagine their thought processes would be like: what's the big deal with this
virus, why do we need to mess up the economy by social distancing, if we're
going to have a vaccine quite soon?

~~~
CivBase
I don't know how you can look around and seriously worry about complacency
right now. Yes, complacency is very bad, but so is panic. We need to find a
healthy, productive middle ground. A trip to my local grocery store is all the
evidence I need to confidently say the pendulum has swung too far the other
way.

People are exhausting our supplies of essential hygiene products and cheap,
non-perishable foods. Scalpers are re-selling the supplies online with huge
markups. Hourly workers are loosing their incomes and parents are struggling
to find means to take care of their kids who are suddenly without school for
the foreseeable future.

We need public awareness. We need people to take this matter seriously. But we
also need a balanced approach to ensure we don't cause even more devastation
in the long term.

Frankly, I'm happy for _anything_ that gets people to calm down for a second
and just commit to good hygiene practices and avoiding crowds for a few
months.

~~~
jamesrcole
Complacency and panic aren’t the only two options.

Complacency is a massive problem right now. So many people are not taking
social distancing seriously, and it’s going to have disastrous consequences,
al la how things are currently playing out in Italy, in many countries.

And _compared to that_ , the temporary exhausting of supplies is a trifling
matter. (Wait until the real panic sets in when hospitals can’t keep up). But
like I said, it’s not like we have to chose between complacency OR panic. We
can take it seriously and take appropriate actions.

------
allovernow
Unfortunately a vaccine is unlikely to work. This is probably being done more
for optics. This virus likely has Antibody Dependent Enhancement. Same reason
there's no vaccine for SARS or MERS. It's 4am and I should be sleeping but
there's a paper floating around where a bunch of SARS candidates were trialed
on multiple species. In ever case immunity was conferred but upon re-exposure
the animals had autoimmune lung damage.

This virus is far more dangerous than most people understand now. The news
media has been a month late in everything since they started reporting because
all of this is evolving too rapidly to confirm to journalistic standards. You
have to dig for this information yourself.

~~~
jeen02
You're a ML engineer, not a specialist in this area.

~~~
mrb
I hate credentialism like this. It's anti-intellectual.

There are many smart people on HN who are perfectly capable of reading and
understanding research literature in an area that is NOT their primary
expertise, and who can make half-decent arguments and deductions.

Reply to the points he raises (if you can). Don't belittle him.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Credentialism aside, there were no sources provided.

I do find the point about no SARS vaccine compelling, however. Is that true?

I know the flu vaccine gets updated every year or so with new viruses that are
prevalent, so if there is no SARS vaccine then I wonder if that is true and if
it is true it couldn't be developed.

Again, multiple things thrown out there without sources which are not common
knowledge, followed by "you can look this up yourself".

~~~
OJFord
I've only quickly searched, and to be honest it's a bit thick with foreign
terminology for me to quickly glean much from it, but seems like this might be
the paper the top-level commenter referred to:

[https://dx.doi.org/10.1128%2FJVI.02395-10](https://dx.doi.org/10.1128%2FJVI.02395-10)

> I do find the point about no SARS [-CoV[-1]] vaccine compelling, however. Is
> that true?

Wikipedia says so, and just gives essentially the same advice as being given
for SARS-CoV-2 (or any human-transmissible virus, I imagine).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Prevention)

------
victorantos
The world.

~~~
anoonmoose
The virus is subsiding in China because they took massive preventative steps
to prevent the spread of the disease. Not all countries are taking such
extensive steps.

------
kstenerud
So Trump didn't need to try to buy a German biotech company to produce a
vaccine "for the US only"?

[https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/president-trump-
tries-...](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/president-trump-tries-to-
lure-curevac-to-make-a-u-s-vaccine-but-german-government-steps)

~~~
crocodiletears
> The Welt am Sonntag story spoke to an anonymous German government source as
> saying Trump was trying to essentially buy the work from the scientists for
> a vaccine, “but only for the United States.”

Bareknuckle and self-interested as Trump's foreign policy may be at times, I
have a hard time believing he'd go so far as to deny the world a vaccine for
this, though I do see the sense in attempting to acquire promising research
teams in order to avoid the overhead of multi-organizational collaboration.

If the last four years have taught me much, it's that anonymous government
officials say a lot of things. I can't read German, does the original article
do anything to validate this claim?

~~~
JanSt
The german ministry of health confirmed[1] the newspaper report. If this is
true it's a major turning point in the trans-atlantic partnership.

[1] [https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/so-agiert-trump-beim-
coro...](https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/so-agiert-trump-beim-coronavirus-
usa-wollen-deutsche-impfstoff-forscher-anlocken/25645578.html)

~~~
InTheArena
Unless there is a new set of information out there, there has been no
confirmation on the exclusivity as part of the negotiation, only the
outlandish statements of a socialist politician who is pushing for a top to
bottom overhaul of the German health care system. The same sources have been
getting a lot of the basic facts wrong (such as the company already being
partly owned by the bill and melinda gates foundation, and a large portion of
their research happening in Boston).

I suspect that this is the same xenophobia that is resulting in the same
rumors floating around the US that China has a vaccine that they are denying
the rest of the world.

Regardless, it might make sense to wait a bit for facts to come out.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
In this case do you mean the world's xenophobia of the states? I find it hard
to believe that this message somehow stokes the United States to xenophobic
sentiment.

~~~
InTheArena
Germany.

The Xenophobia in the states that there are some who believe that the Chinese
are doing the same to the US.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Why would that be only limited to Germany? The whole world saw that news
story, knowing it would have effects on everyone that's not in the US.

------
donmb
You had one job.

------
andrewla
From the article:

> There’s no chance participants could get infected from the shots, because
> they don’t contain the virus itself.

So ... what's in the vaccine? Is it just saline? Without a viral load I don't
think we could call it a vaccine in the traditional sense; if this is some
crazy new technology that enables the immune system to process the virus
without introducing some viral material, that's neat and all, but deserves
some deeper explanation.

~~~
a_c_s
Many vaccines only use parts of the virus (such as proteins from the exterior
of the virus). These vaccines can't cause infection because only certain parts
of the virus are included, not whole viruses.

~~~
andrewla
I was not aware of that -- I thought that all vaccines used some
live/dead/weakened/attenuated viral load.

------
H8crilA
Yeah, we don't even know if this disease is vaccine-able, meaning whether
people get long term immunity post exposure.

Worth noting that the SARS (v1) vaccine was abandoned after the disease
disappeared. Idiotic lack of long term thinking.

~~~
ShorsHammer
Why develop a vaccine for a disease that is now non-existent? We still have
the research from that and that's why we already know about some of the
workable treatments like HIV and Malaria drugs.

There's a number of Zika vaccines that have been developed years ago that
still aren't close to regulatory approval.

SARS-COV-1 infected people for 2 years, then it was gone. There's certainly a
chance that SARS-COV-2 disappears before a vaccine could make it to market.

~~~
H8crilA
> Why develop (...)

To get more research, obviously.

Also - epidemics are tail risks. You cannot just leave them to the market to
be priced on the expected value basis, that will leave them grossly
underpriced.

~~~
ShorsHammer
> Why develop (a vaccine for a disease that is now non-existent?)

Unless there's somehow infinite amounts to spend on research that's not viable
whatsoever and actively diverting away funding from more pressing needs.

~~~
H8crilA
There are no more pressing needs than tail risks involving the entire
population.

But again, you leave it to markets and people that think in broken expected
values and yeah it will seem like the project is stupid.

Expected values make no sense when the system lacks ergodicity.

------
gerardnll
I'm not sure we can wait 12-18 months... Everybody will have to put all
resources onto this, because if the virus comes back in autumn, it's going to
be worse according some predictions. Hope it's not tho.

