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We’ve all seen those pandemic movies where the hero, while not trying to rescue his long lost love or children (or both), somehow figures out how to get the antibodies needed for a vaccine.

The antibodies are then transformed into said vaccine in a matter of minutes by someone in a lab coat, tested on the hero, and then mass-produced in record time and used to save everyone.

It’s a nice idea, but also the most factually incorrect part of any pandemic movie, and I’m including zombies here.

Vaccines take years to synthesise, which is why, as CNN points out, the vaccine timeline for the coronavirus, announced last month, has experts worried.

The estimated time made headlines last month, when Trump remarked at a televised Cabinet Room meeting with pharmaceutical executives that a vaccine could be ready in “three to four months.”

There, in front of TV cameras, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), poured cold water on Trump’s estimate, saying it would be more like a year to a year and a half.

Since then, the idea that we’ll have a vaccine in 12 to 18 months has taken hold, appeared in the news, and been used as a beacon of hope for everyone hunkered down, waiting for this to all be over.

“Tony Fauci is saying a year to 18 months — I think that’s optimistic,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a leading expert on infeYUctious disease and vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine.

“Maybe if all the stars align, but probably longer.”

Paul Offit, the co-inventor of the successful rotavirus vaccine, put it more bluntly.

“When Dr. Fauci said 12 to 18 months, I thought that was ridiculously optimistic,” he told CNN. “And I’m sure he did, too.”

Trials are underway to find a vaccine in America. 45 volunteers are participating in the first phase of the trial at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle and soon, at Emory University in Atlanta.

Another clinical trial is underway in China. This is unprecedented for drug trials of any kind.

Vaccine trials typically start with testing in animals before launching into a three-phase process. The first phase involves injecting the vaccine into a small group of people to assess safety and monitor their immune response. The second ramps up the number of people — often into the hundreds, and often including more members of at-risk groups — for a randomized trial.

If the results are promising, the trial moves to phase-three test for efficacy and safety with thousands or tens of thousands of people, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This speedy response means that they’re jumping ahead to phase two and testing humans and animals simultaneously.

Walt Orenstein, a professor of medicine at Emory and the former director of the US National Immunization Program, said the tradeoff is a difficult balancing act.

“If you want every ‘t’ crossed and ‘i’ dotted, how many more people will die or suffer from Covid-19?” he said. “It’s not an easy decision, it is a breakneck speed for moving things.”

On the other hand, history provides us with a number of examples of vaccines gone wrong, In the 1960s, a test for the human respiratory syncytial virus vaccine not only didn’t work, but it also made the symptoms worse and resulted in the death of two toddlers.

In 1976, the accelerated reaction to the swine flu outbreak caused 450 people to develop Guillain-Barré syndrome, which attacks the nerves in the body and leads to paralysis.

In other words, this is a very risky undertaking.

You can read the full article, here.

The bottom line is that we can’t place all of our faith in the 12 to 18 months vaccine timeline. The best shot we have at beating this thing, for the time being at least, is to stay indoors, wash our hands regularly, and physically distance when outside.

[source:cnn]