If it's anything like the normal vaccine development cycle, most of that time is consumed by things like writing grant proposals, waiting for grants, convincing

If it's anything like the normal vaccine development cycle, most of that time is consumed by things like writing grant proposals, waiting for grants, convincing a drug company and/or their convincing themselves it's worth taking the risk to try our your drug candidate, etc. COVID-19 vaccine development in the US and U.K. shows what you can do when people are willing to take huge gambles on a candidate ever working out, including starting mass production before Phase III trials produce strong evidence. The US Operation Warp Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed made a huge bet on Sanofi/GSK's vaccine, which in its first trial did not produce sufficient immunity in elderly, the second set of trials that started earlier this year are very promising so far. Ditto AZ/Oxford which has not applied for an Emergency Use Authorization. Novavax's vaccine also looks very good, but they are getting severely delayed in making an application because supplies for cell culture manufacturing are first going to the Serum Institute of India and AZ for Oxford's vaccine and Janssen, and there are some supplies common with the mRNA vaccines. Trained workers are also in short supply. Operation Warp Speed is a fantastic success in using the style of the Manhattan Project including paying Pfizer in advance for 100 million doses of BioNTech's vaccine, but so far only 2 of its 5 huge billion dollar plus upfront bets have paid off. Outside of an emergency that would be considered an unacceptable waste of money.