MidTnAg said:
cisgenderedAggie said:
I think that's usually what they are doing when they develop vaccines...trying to get a target for the body to react to. That said, developing vaccines is not something I have any experience with.
I have some experience with it. The biggest problem is, after the development of the vaccines, doing the clinical trials takes a ton of time. Drug trials have to be done to determine how effective they are and how much negative / harmful effects do they cause. That takes time. I strongly believe that it will take us at least 18 months to develop an effective vaccine to this virus. In China, a vaccine could probably be made sooner since they could bypass ethics in testing procedures that our medical personnel would have to follow.
Trials can move quick when the conditions are right. There's loads of old people in nursing homes probably in the early stages of panic, so recruitment wouldn't need to be a bottleneck. I'm curious how much efficacy can really be warranted. I don't see how it's ethical to run a controlled trial on an infectious disease, especially one with this kind of propensity for severe complications.
Is there a reason that a small stage safety trial can't be implemented, just to show that it isn't causing cytokines storms or something very dangerous, then immediately go into post-marketing like trials? Regulatory decisions are always risk/benefit. For some populations, the risk/benefit makes sense here. I'd worry that manufacturing and distribution are the most problems bottlenecks.