How have they got a vaccine so quickly

[GreatestShowUnicorn]

How when they’ve never successfully managed to get a vaccine before for other viruses SARS, hiv, etc have they managed to churn one out quickly now? I got get the whole conspiracy side of thing this is a genuine question.

By running different parts of the development and testing process in parallel rather than serial, crucially including getting production facilities up and running before they knew if it would work. A massively expensive gamble which wouldn't normally happen - if the vaccines fail any stage then that investment would be wasted. A massive amount of money and clever peoples effort has been thrown at this.

A massive worldwide global effort and untold money.

Malaria could be eradicated potentially if people took the time but because it only really affects the third world no one cares

Was never the incentive to do it before. And other SARS were not a “western” problem.

Also, as anyone who has paid the slightest attention would know by now:
HIV is a fundamentally different problem.
Vaccines for SARs type viruses had been worked on successfully but the epidemics were contained so the work on them didn't need to be finished.

My understanding is that they were pretty close to a vaccine for SARS and as Covid shares similar traits they were able to adapt already existing studies instead of starting anew. Also a lot of the issues like funding and waiting for things like approval were fast tracked.

A lot of time in vaccine research is spent waiting for funding and having your results sitting in a queue waiting to be checked and approved.

They didn’t need to complete the others because they died out. In addition much of the work done previously for those vaccines and the fact we have Covid vaccines for animals meant they had a head start,

Shit loads of money and some of the cleverest minds in the world. SARS wasn't a global pandemic so there was no need for the investment.

There is some really useful info on this page and a little video that explains it
www.research.ox.ac.uk/Area/coronavirus-research/vaccine?fbclid=IwAR3YyV-JTNu_6tSYXoHmVYwNOttnM0zhTj3z2JVXyhFMG-PUzWvmJCiapCY

By running processes in parallel. By having unlimited money. Most importantly - by building on existing work on SARS and MERS viruses - this work was progressing, but was halted when those viruses faded by themselves. It did however provide a platform from which to start so the research didn't have to start from scratch.

There were no vaccines for SARS and MERS because those diseases didn't go pandemic and so no vaccine was needed - but they did give us a springboard for COVID. We should be grateful, not sceptical.

I guess as it belongs to a family of viruses, that gives a huge starting point. Also, years of red tape, searching for funding, ethics committees etc. all that has been completely bypassed.

Some things are harder to make vaccines for I think. Coronavirus isn't a very "clever" virus, it's only causing so much destruction because it's new and we dont have any kind of built up immunity to it.

But primarily, the whole world has come together with its brightest minds and all its resources to do this. I dont think HIV was ever prioritised like this because of how the ill were demonized for it.

Everything everyone else said, plus the best brains in the world with unlimited money and resources working round the clock with all the usual barriers removed.

By throwing just ALL of the money and resources at it. ALL of them.

Multiple companies working around the clock, trials being granted funding and going ahead essentially instantly, lots of very clever people working very very hard and actually getting provided with the things needed to get the job done in a faster than glacial pace that is the norm in this kind of field.

money not only talks it sings arias too.

Throwing tons of money and resource at it. Clinical trials involve huge amounts of paperwork across many different countries and the data processing, documentation and review process takes years. If loads of people prioritise this and multiple steps in the process are done in parallel it can be achieved in a much shorter timeframe. Never before has there been a common goal like this which has had the resource to move it forwards at this speed.

About the Oxford vaccine:

"The Oxford COVID-19 vaccine team is led by Prof Sarah Gilbert, Prof Andrew Pollard, Prof Teresa Lambe, Dr Sandy Douglas, Prof Catherine Green and Prof Adrian Hill. Their team includes scientists from both the Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group, who bring together decades of internationally recognised experience in vaccine research, including responding to the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

The teams had already used ChAdOx1 vaccine technology to produce candidate vaccines against a number of pathogens including flu, Zika and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another coronavirus. They had already begun work on pandemic preparedness with the technology behind ChAdOx, in preparation for 'Disease X'. When the disease emerged in China, they moved quickly. As soon as the genetic sequence was available, they began work on a trial."

www.research.ox.ac.uk/Article/2020-07-19-the-oxford-covid-19-vaccine

So sounds the groundwork was already done, it was just a case of putting in the right bit to make it specific to covid.

This was explained at length yesterday on the Radio 4 PM programme (available on iplayer). Apparently bringing a vaccine to market normally takes around ten years, but that's because loads of time is spent applying for funding, at each stage of development, and then finding the funding for the trial, then finding the participants etc etc. And, by virtue of having unlimited money thrown at the problem, plus thousands of willing participants, all those time consuming stages have been wiped away.

I work in a Pharma related industry, the money available when required and the level of intelligence in this area is phenomenal.

They threw EVERYTHING they had at it and removed all barriers/smoothed the way to an extraordinary degree.

They were making good progress with SARS, but it burnt itself out before that work was realised. That gave them a good basis for Covid.

It's all about money and resources. Not needing to apply for funding because it's just there. Way more scientists working on it than normal. The EMA and FDA giving resources to reviewing the work done by the companies much more quickly than usual.

It's like 10 people painting a house instead of 1, it means it happens faster.

Just to add, the flu vaccine is a newly designed/made each year, depending on what strain looks the most likely to cause issues.

All about funding, helped by the fact they were not starting from zero.

Its because with other vaccines there's usually a lot of waiting, applying for funds, wait, reapply, wait, try to get volunteers, wait. But with covid they've been giving all the funding they need and a lot of people ready to volunteer

It's amazing what can happen with unlimited lab time, unlimited funding and pretty much every scientist in the world working for the same goal!
Anyone who thinks that the covid vaccines are rushed/fake/untested etc clearly lacks the intellectual capacity to understand the basic facts.

if only an effort like this were made against malaria...
it helps that the vaccines are being manufactured at risk; govts will pay for them whether they work or not afaik. So the pharma companies were willing to throw more resources at the problem.

From what I can tell, phase 3 trials for vaccines would normally take 1-4 years, not the mere 6 months these trials are taking.

But if they recruit a huge number of participants (44,000, not a mere 4000), then the duration can be made shorter, because there's more chances for rare events to be spotted.

44,000 participants is huge. I trust the safety data more than the efficacy info on all these vaccines.