Developing SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates was not the difficult part. Within weeks of the genetic sequence of the virus being sequenced, several existing techniq

Developing SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates was not the difficult part. Within weeks of the genetic sequence of the virus being sequenced, several existing techniques (inactivated whole virion, mRNA, adenovirus vector, to name a few) were rapidly applied to develop vaccine candidates. These techniques range from extremely old-fashioned (inactivated whole virion) to brand new (mRNA). The thing that was sped up was the entire clinical trial schedule (not the "Sci-Fi" part). Clinical trials are costly, so private companies would normally proceed cautiously. They would take longer on the pre-clinical trials (e.g., animal trials), and take longer to evaluate the results before beginning Phase-I trials. They would wait for Phase-I trials to finish before deciding whether to proceed to Phase-II trials. They would again wait before proceeding to Phase-III trials. But this time, various governments were providing guarantees and financial backstops, so companies could begin Phase-II and Phase-III trials before Phase-I trials were complete. Just to illustrate this, Moderna's Phase-I trial is still not complete, and will not be finished until November 2021.[1] Yet Moderna began its Phase-III trial in July 2020,[2] as soon as it had enough safety data from Phase-I and II trials to do so. Long story short, the main speed-up came from removing all financial considerations from development, not from Sci-Fi advances in vaccine development (though Moderna and Biontech's vaccines are using new techniques). In some sense, we were lucky that SARS-CoV-2 is not particularly difficult to develop vaccines against. A wide range of techniques now appear to have decent results. Influenza is a much more difficult virus to develop vaccines against, because of some of its special properties (reassortment of the 8 sections of its genome, much faster mutation rate). 1. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04283461 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04283461 2. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427