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I have a question that I hope someone in medical research might be able to guide me to understanding. Suppose we had a 'good enough' vaccine today. It's side e
by anitil 6y ago
I have a question that I hope someone in medical research might be able to guide me to understanding.
Suppose we had a 'good enough' vaccine today. It's side effects are rare enough and/or minor enough that it can be used on the general population, and it is effective in enough people to be worth using. However we don't yet know both of these things.
What would be the likely timeline from lab, to small feasibility trials to safety trials to population trials to large-scale distribution?
My guess based on the risk of distributing a vaccine that could have long-term risks down the line and the large population that would be taking it is that this could be multiple years of slowly increasing the population using it. Is this correct?
- fragmede 6y agoNew York Times says at least 12-18 months. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-covid-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coron...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoVaccines in general are believed not to have long-term risks beyond those caused by the desired immune response - there's just not really a plausible mechanism that would allow them to. If it's proven to be effective and safe over O(months), scaling up distribution will be the only blocker. (And note that this isn't quite a "suppose"; we have a lot of vaccine candidates today, and most experts expect some of them will prove to be good enough.)
- anitil 6y agoThanks, I didn't know either of these things.