Targeting fall for emergency use . . . for the general population our target goal is next spring
A team in Oxford University is claiming availability in September, but it is not clear how long it will take to ramp up production for the general population:
On the other hand Dr. Fauci is much less optimistic: At least a year to a year and a half at best. . .
The fact that some people who have had COVID-19 and later relapse shows that many people may not develop a lasting immunity to the virus. In addition, recent research is showing that the virus is continuing to mutate so vaccines may not be enough to prevent new infections:
. . .unexpected structural change “raises the alarm that the ongoing vaccine development may become futile in future epidemic if more mutations were identified”
The timing and effectiveness of a vaccine are critical on multiple levels. If a vaccine is really available by September, then it is likely that limited shutdowns and summer weather may be sufficient to prevent an epidemic until the vaccine becomes available.
If we really are not going have working vaccine for another 1.5 years or more, then continued shutdowns become totally ridiculous. State and local governments will all be bankrupt, and the economy will be in collapse if lockdowns continue for anything like that period of time.
My opinion is the only reasonable alternative if no vaccine becomes available will be isolation for the aged and those with high risk factors, while the rest of the population builds the necessary herd immunity to end epidemics.
What is our plan B if vaccines turn out to be ineffective or take several years to develop?
If I understand it correctly, part of the reason for the shutdown was because our hospitals, as they stand in 2020 after years of budget cuts, were not equipped with all the equipment they needed for an influx of patients.
So the purpose of the shutdown was to slow down the spread of the virus so that new hospital beds and new equipment could be acquired.
So…now that all that new equipment is out there, future rounds of the coronavirus should not need a shutdown, because hospitals will now be equipped to deal with all the patients.
This of course depends on the equipment being kept in good shape, and budgets not cut again.
If an effective vaccine is not available for a year and half or more, then logically there is no reason for young, healthy people to stay locked down.
The quicker that young and healthy people are exposed to the virus and develop immunity, the quicker that older and less healthy people can safely leave from isolation without getting infected. The young and healthy are not going to overwhelm the hospitals.
Using draconian measures to flatten the curve may actually kill more people in the long run in addition to creating huge economic disruption.
I predict we beat all of the estimates particularly if this outbreak continues into the fall with significant numbers.
We’ll have it ready for HCW’s and FR’s by fall and if it looks like we’re heading into another outbreak we’ll see at least one vaccine in wide distribution probably by the end of the year, no later than February.
Not so long ago that’s exactly how we developed herd immunity as a society to some pretty awful diseases.
Parents would frequently take their kids to go play with kids who had summer cases of Chicken Pox, even Mumps, Measles, and German Measles so that by the time school came around they’d have immunity.
Even if intestinal polio was going around a lot of parents would expose their kids to it hoping the immunity would protect them from the deadly neurological polio.
Science and medicine do not work on a timetable. There are no definites.
A vaccine may or may not be discovered.
If so, it could be a few months or several years.
The current so called “treatment”, i.e. the lock down, is simply unsustainable and has already caused grave damage. If continued, it will kill FAR more than the virus and leave the survivors in bad shape.
At some point, (no more than 30 days) we will have to acknowledge that we will have to go back to work, end all lock downs and acknowledge that the death and injury of the virus is a less harmful end result than an extended lock down.
And if the virus surges at a future point, we should not repeat a lock down but should muscle through it.
And remember.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. The survivors (both individual and society) will develop resistance, as they have done for untold ages.
I agree, we should end the shutdown just as the virus is going to peak, so we can get the economic damage from the shutdown combined with the extra deaths and the economic damage of never having shut down in the first place.
That isn’t true, they both work on a timetable which is always accelerated in a crisis.
That’s how we went from 200mph biplanes to 600mph jets in a decade and how we went from the V1 to the moon in two.
In less than sixty days we went from not even knowing the genetic code for this virus to having more than a dozen testting protocols for it wold wide and more than a million people tested in the US.
The FDA is saying a vaccine should be available in March 2021 and literally nobody with any sort knowledge on the subject is saying the end of year
Experts still estimate that it could take about a year — or 12 to 18 months — to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said during an appearance on “CBS This Morning” today.
That means a vaccine would not be available until around March 2021.
