The COVID-19 vaccine was developed in less than a year — and that’s totally fine
Ten years to develop a vaccine is a bad thing
So next time somebody expresses concern at the astonishing speed the vaccine trials have happened at, point out to them that ten years isn’t a good thing, it’s a bad thing. It’s not ten years because that is safe, it’s ten hard years of battling indifference, commercial imperatives, luck, and red tape. It represents barriers in the process that we have now proved are “easy” to overcome. You just need unlimited cash, some clever and highly motivated people, all the world’s trial infrastructure, an almost unlimited pool of altruistic, wonderful trial volunteers, and some sensible regulators.
With all of this and the clock ticking on a global pandemickilling people by the second, it turns out we can do amazing things. The vaccine trials have been nothing short of a miracle. A revolution in how we do trials that when you think about it is perhaps not that surprising given our ability to innovate when we really need to.
And we really need to – necessity being the mother of invention. Safety has not been compromised. All trials have been through the correct “phases” or process of any normal drug or vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of the very best of us volunteered and had an experimental vaccine. The world watched so closely that when a single person fell ill, we wereall debating it.
To date, there has not been a single death related to COVID-19 vaccines and only a handful of potentially serious events. Just imagine watching everybody in a small city for six months and reporting every single heart attack, stroke, neurological condition, or anything that might be judged serious. How astonishing is this? It has been a triumph of medical science.
I haven’t even touched on the lucky confluence of timing that meant this all happened at a time when sequencing all the genes in a person or virus is so routine nobody bats an eyelid. This turbocharged the early preclinical science needed as the foundation stone of several new technologies at the right point to be exploited.
At this time, three vaccines have already broken cover and demonstrated efficacy higher than we had ever hoped. The bar was set by regulatorsat around 50%. BothModerna and Pfizerreported 95% efficacy, andOxford University reported 90% efficacyfor a particular dosage regimen. Safety data is still to follow, but the track record of vaccines is excellent, and I am an optimist.
None of this is to downplay the challenges still ahead. It is also not to say vaccines are without safety questions still to be answered. It has been, however, a triumph of good process and great people. I am confident that when regulators pore over the safety and efficacy data, closely followed by every interested scientist in the world, that vaccines will only be used if their benefits clearly outweigh the risks – and you should be confident too.
This article is republished fromThe ConversationbyMark Toshner, Director of Translational Biomedical Research,University of Cambridgeunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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