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The vaccine was developed in 48 hours (Feb 24th) following China sharing the DNA sequence. How many could we have saved?

shawnz 6y ago
How many could have been killed if we rushed and it turned out to have serious side effects?
- _underfl0w_ 6y ago
  That's still a possibility, though "rushing" can be somewhat subjective. By strictly adhering to the scientific method/process, we can hope to eliminate uncertainty in this regard. Unfortunately... as the parent points out, that requires cooperation between geographically dispersed parties (some of whom may have priorities emphasizing social norms such as "saving face")
tantalor 6y ago
There is plenty of reason to question the safety of mRNA vaccines because none have ever been approved for use in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_vaccine
fasteddie31003 6y ago
The FDA needs to make a fast-track vaccine approval process for mRNA vaccines where the pathway to deliver the mRNA has been pre-approved and the only change is in the mRNA payload. However, I don't have much faith in the FDA.
Antrikshy 6y ago
It seems obvious in hindsight, but such trials do have an important role in this process. Not to mention mRNA vaccines are new and it could possibly just have made things worse.
noja 6y ago
How many could have been saved from injecting an untested vaccine on billions of people? What a weird question.
- tim333 6y ago
  You wouldn't, indeed couldn't suddenly inject billions of people as the supply wouldn't be there. Sinopharm have gone ahead and vaccinated about a million people before full testing with apparently no infections and no serious side effects so it's not that outlandish. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/china-has-given-almost-a-million-people-experimental-covid-vaccine-says-company https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/china-has-give...
Exmoor 6y ago
The presumption here is that we could have been vaccinating people en masse since sometime in spring. However, I do not believe large-scale production of an mRNA vaccine was possible at that time. This does not seem to be the case. My understanding is that manufacturing this type of vaccine is significantly different than other vaccines previously produced at scale (flu vaccine, etc.) so they needed to build out their factories almost from scratch, to the exacting standards required of medical facilities, which likely took many months. To the best of my knowledge, vaccine makers have been producing the vaccine as quick as they can, planning for hopefully good results, but knowing they could just trash it in the case of bad results, and they only just now have tens of millions of doses.
tim333 6y ago
Probably a lot. I wonder if we could have some sort of algorithm, or maybe machine learning to maximize human wellbeing for the next pandemic.

shawnz 6y ago

How many could have been killed if we rushed and it turned out to have serious side effects?

_underfl0w_ 6y ago
That's still a possibility, though "rushing" can be somewhat subjective. By strictly adhering to the scientific method/process, we can hope to eliminate uncertainty in this regard. Unfortunately... as the parent points out, that requires cooperation between geographically dispersed parties (some of whom may have priorities emphasizing social norms such as "saving face")

tantalor 6y ago

There is plenty of reason to question the safety of mRNA vaccines because none have ever been approved for use in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_vaccine

fasteddie31003 6y ago

The FDA needs to make a fast-track vaccine approval process for mRNA vaccines where the pathway to deliver the mRNA has been pre-approved and the only change is in the mRNA payload. However, I don't have much faith in the FDA.

Antrikshy 6y ago

It seems obvious in hindsight, but such trials do have an important role in this process. Not to mention mRNA vaccines are new and it could possibly just have made things worse.

noja 6y ago

How many could have been saved from injecting an untested vaccine on billions of people? What a weird question.

tim333 6y ago
You wouldn't, indeed couldn't suddenly inject billions of people as the supply wouldn't be there. Sinopharm have gone ahead and vaccinated about a million people before full testing with apparently no infections and no serious side effects so it's not that outlandish. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/china-has-given-almost-a-million-people-experimental-covid-vaccine-says-company https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/china-has-give...

Exmoor 6y ago

The presumption here is that we could have been vaccinating people en masse since sometime in spring. However, I do not believe large-scale production of an mRNA vaccine was possible at that time. This does not seem to be the case. My understanding is that manufacturing this type of vaccine is significantly different than other vaccines previously produced at scale (flu vaccine, etc.) so they needed to build out their factories almost from scratch, to the exacting standards required of medical facilities, which likely took many months. To the best of my knowledge, vaccine makers have been producing the vaccine as quick as they can, planning for hopefully good results, but knowing they could just trash it in the case of bad results, and they only just now have tens of millions of doses.

tim333 6y ago

Probably a lot. I wonder if we could have some sort of algorithm, or maybe machine learning to maximize human wellbeing for the next pandemic.