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While popular films often depict a vaccine that’s effective enough and soon enough to stop an epidemic (Contagion, I Am Legend, World War Z) in real life many e

While popular films often depict a vaccine that’s effective enough and soon enough to stop an epidemic (Contagion, I Am Legend, World War Z) in real life many epidemics are fought without the help of vaccines (Ebola, HIV, SARS). The combination of speed, effectiveness, and new technology in COVID vaccines is “astonishing” indeed.

dnautics 6y ago
I do believe we have a 36-hour to vaccine protocol for pandemic flu (one of my coworkers ran a real run of the protocol against a novel flu strain almost a decade ago [0]), estimated weeks to first responders/highly vulnerables and maybe a month or two for general population. This is really at the limit of what is physically possible (at best some sort of highly flexible distributed manufacturing network maybe down to weeks for general population?): Flu vaccines are very precedented, and though this protocol had many "new bits" efficacy, infra, and scaleup are kind of more "well known". [0] it was considered to be a dry run in case of a real pandemic; he was told that he would get a phone call during the week, and was emailed the flu virus sequence one morning, built the vaccine over the course of a day, and fed-exed the vaccine seequence to the scaleup and testing facility and by 36 hours they had validation that the vaccine caused a positive antigen response. That year's flu did not become a pandemic, well by luck so far we really haven't had a major flu pandemic since that year.
- divbzero 6y ago
  That sounds pretty incredible too. Speaking of flu vaccines reminds me of this Pfizer press release from November 2018 [1] that described “a collaboration with German biotech BioNTech to develop new RNA vaccine technology to create a better flu shot”. The press release concluded with optimism but cautioned that “the technology is several years away from being tested in the US”. [1]: https://www.pfizer.com/news/featured_stories/featured_stories_detail/new_rna_technology_could_get_the_flu_vaccine_right_every_year https://www.pfizer.com/news/featured_stories/featured_storie...
  - dnautics 6y ago
    I could be wrong, but it's difficult to believe that the BioNTech technology provides much of an advantage over the flu, the proposed scaleup for a (traditional) emergency flu vaccine is "take over existing chicken egg infrastructure and hijack a big chunk of it for a week". I'm glad it found a use in the COVID vaccines, because coronaviruses are resistant to other vaccination techniques iirc.

dnautics 6y ago

I do believe we have a 36-hour to vaccine protocol for pandemic flu (one of my coworkers ran a real run of the protocol against a novel flu strain almost a decade ago [0]), estimated weeks to first responders/highly vulnerables and maybe a month or two for general population. This is really at the limit of what is physically possible (at best some sort of highly flexible distributed manufacturing network maybe down to weeks for general population?): Flu vaccines are very precedented, and though this protocol had many "new bits" efficacy, infra, and scaleup are kind of more "well known". [0] it was considered to be a dry run in case of a real pandemic; he was told that he would get a phone call during the week, and was emailed the flu virus sequence one morning, built the vaccine over the course of a day, and fed-exed the vaccine seequence to the scaleup and testing facility and by 36 hours they had validation that the vaccine caused a positive antigen response. That year's flu did not become a pandemic, well by luck so far we really haven't had a major flu pandemic since that year.

divbzero 6y ago
That sounds pretty incredible too. Speaking of flu vaccines reminds me of this Pfizer press release from November 2018 [1] that described “a collaboration with German biotech BioNTech to develop new RNA vaccine technology to create a better flu shot”. The press release concluded with optimism but cautioned that “the technology is several years away from being tested in the US”. [1]: https://www.pfizer.com/news/featured_stories/featured_stories_detail/new_rna_technology_could_get_the_flu_vaccine_right_every_year https://www.pfizer.com/news/featured_stories/featured_storie...
- dnautics 6y ago
  I could be wrong, but it's difficult to believe that the BioNTech technology provides much of an advantage over the flu, the proposed scaleup for a (traditional) emergency flu vaccine is "take over existing chicken egg infrastructure and hijack a big chunk of it for a week". I'm glad it found a use in the COVID vaccines, because coronaviruses are resistant to other vaccination techniques iirc.