>No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards. Normally vaccines take longer to develop because years of studies must be done to

>No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards. Normally vaccines take longer to develop because years of studies must be done to confirm the absence of longer-term side effects, not always because the actual vaccine development itself takes years. This requirement seems to have been bypassed for potential covid19 vaccines, allowing the vaccine to be released faster, at the expense of not having time to test for the absence of any long-term side effects (e.g. if a side effect takes 2-3 years to manifest, it's impossible to detect this with a trial that only lasts 6-12 months).