Vaccines are biological in nature. It's very possible that time will be a much more meaningful factor than people or equipment in producing enough of a vaccine to cover sufficiently many people so "massively parallelizing" the process may not help with the lead time to vaccine availability, only with quantity when it does become available (assuming an effective vaccine is found).
Having said that, I would expect that in most Western countries, sufficient quantities to cover the most vulnerable people (older people and those with existing heart or respiratory conditions - ie largely the same people selected for annual flu vaccines in many places) will be available by next (Northern hemisphere) winter.
Interesting, I wonder if when we're developing the vaccine, ability to easily mass produce the vaccine is a factor... I imagine the biggest issue once we have a vaccine is going to be how to get it out to everyone quickly enough... like I can see critical care workers and then maybe elderly and it being this really long time before it can be available to everyone... or do you start mass production of the vaccine and avoid distribution until you have enough to get everyone vaccinated so that you have the protection period of 3-4 months? Interesting to think it's not just the science of the vaccine but also the application of the vaccine that can be a factor... In the meantime it's promising that we're also learning how to treat the infection better and better...
Considering the amount of time to develop and produce a vaccine for widespread distribution, I don't expect anything in place until next flu season if not the year after.
Building out the capacity to manufacture and distribute ten billion doses of new vaccines as quickly as we can validate their safety and efficacy would also be quite the feat.
It's nice for a first-world citizen that we were getting vaccinated against a new disease 12-18 months after it was first discovered, but with a big enough supply chain we could potentially be aiming to finish a world-wide vaccination campaign in 6-12 months, before we begin running up against the limits of our current methodologies for clinical trials.
Stupid question - why will a coronavirus vaccine take so long even when they say people are working at an incredible pace if we can produce a new flu vaccine each year? Are scientists guessing strains multiple years in advance so there is time to produce a vaccine or something?
This is an interesting question, and I can confidently say the technology exists to have some quantity of human vaccine within 3 months. Will it be enough to have an impact? Probably not. We're talking about needing millions of doses. But if the companies in the space can succeed at at least showing the turn-around-time for some quantity of working vaccine is possible, then it becomes an engineering problem and not a scientific problem. Then you just need to marshal resources and you could be at a place where bulk vaccine could be produced in that short window of time. This 2019-nCoV marks an inflection point for humanity IMHO where sequencing costs, data transmissions, and vaccine technology are all good enough to actually accomplish a real-time vaccine. The science is here, now it's just turning a bigger crank.
Manufacturing capacity is going to be a big constraint this year, but surely whatever factory was going to make the old variant, could equally well make some new variant of the vaccine.
Longer-term, if we need a new vaccine every 9 months, that doesn't sound like a huge manufacturing problem. We manufacture many high-tech things on a scale of 1 per person per year, like the flu vaccine. The difficulty is ramping up fast (especially when you think that demand may only last a year).
If there is an effective vaccine I'm expecting a lot of people to be drafted to create facilities to make it in quantity. (Assuming it can't be made in the same process that the current flu shot is made). If society puts its mind to it building this infrastructure can be done very fast - it won't be the most cost effective build in ordinary times, but it will get the job done.
No they won't,they'll slow down the spread therefore fewer people die before the vaccine becomes available, also any vaccine that comes out will be months away from now, if not a year or more. They have to do animal and human trials before they can start mass production.
Even achieving something comparable to prior year’s flu vaccination would not bring us anywhere close to the herd immunity threshold though. I’m not as concerned with production of the vaccine itself as the logistics involved. I find it hard to believe that a country that otherwise can’t deliver the basic protective necessities to frontline workers is suddenly going to pull out a logistical miracle out of their hats.
Only adjacent to this: am i wrong to think that in many places this lack of available vaccines in a predictable manner is leading to a staggered immunization and (unneeded?) delay of effective mass immunization?
I mean: if you waited to stockpile large enough quantities first, you'd then be able to apply the vaccines quicker (given right logistics and man power) speeding up heard imunity. Am I wrong?
Wouldn't this accumulation strategy make more sense even if it's harder to apply?
I ask because it's clear that vaccination has become so political everywhere that govs are rushing to "start immunization" while not being able to garantee a sustainable rate of vaccinations.
In terms of vaccine I'd be more worried about even poorer uptake than the COVID vaccines among vulnerable populations this time around than I would with supply. The regulatory and manufacturing infrastructure exists to produce a lot of flu vaccines and update the antigens in a matter of months, so I reckon we would be ok on supply within a year. Although the ramp up might depend on who is in office I suppose and how offensive the idea is to their base.
A couple thoughts spring to mind including both your standard, “it takes a while to get everyone in to get one of these,” coupled with a growing distrust of expert medical advice.
A member of my own extended family is still convinced this is a giant conspiracy by [insert flavor of the week here] to [insert flavor of the week here]. I doubt that they get the vaccine no matter how fast it’s available.
I know the goal of vaccines isn’t realistically 100% deployment, but it feels there is going to be some lag here too.
My hunch is a return to normalcy looks more like everyone wearing masks in public for the next few years, with increased distancing in confined spaces (more sweeping WFH policies!) while we wait for adoption of the vaccine.
That was limited by manufacturing not logistics. If we continue scaling up manufacturing (and not diverting it to unnecessary uses like booster doses), the world can get vaccinated in a reasonable time frame.
I'm not trying to contradict you. Just saying that the kind of vaccine that can be perhaps ready relatively quickly is the kind that's not very common yet, and is in the stage of "new and exciting technology", atm. I'll exercise caution.
There were news today that first subjects are getting the experimental vaccines already. I don't know if it's fast enough or not. But I doubt people will not try to speed things up, at all levels.
Having said that, I would expect that in most Western countries, sufficient quantities to cover the most vulnerable people (older people and those with existing heart or respiratory conditions - ie largely the same people selected for annual flu vaccines in many places) will be available by next (Northern hemisphere) winter.
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