Surely a vaccine may never happen?

[tangochutney]

I keep hearing family/friends saying stuff along the lines of ‘well until they sort out the vaccine’ but I was thinking of all the diseases that have been around forever that they’ve not managed to vaccinate. I’m sure I read they’ve been working on making a vaccination for chlamydia for 50 years with zero success plus so so many other infections and viruses- surely they can’t just work on it for a while and magic one up in a certain timeframe like people seem to think.

[missfliss]

Just a nudge of agreement @Sunshinegirl82

Not sure why the idea that there could be a successful vaccine based on the 4 currently in development and some at human trial stage is such an anathema- but I will join you in being hopeful

[ClimbDad]

Why would anyone make claims about a vaccine being ready in September?

There are millions of pounds available right now to anyone who can show promise with a vaccine. And billions available for anyone who produces a successful vaccine.

What’s happened with Remdesivir should be a cautionary tale. The US study that led to its FDA approval was on the border of statistical insignificance - in other words those patients were likely to have recovered on that timeframe anyway. But desperation and a clever corporate strategy driven by the need to secure a return on investment for what was a failed Ebola drug meant it was hailed as a treatment.

Big money is involved and there is a desperation unlike anything we’ve seen for a vaccine to work. Regulatory hurdles have already been removed. This is a dangerous combination for the development of a safe vaccine.

Optimism won’t beat this virus. I expect we will defeat it eventually but anyone who has studied human coronaviruses in any depth knows they are very tricky. We don’t fully understand them yet, which means our current responses are unlikely to be effective. With more time we will get the right answer.

[SandysMam]

I have a chronic illness which puts me in the vulnerable catergory. My consultant has pretty much said not to rest hopes on a vaccine and to find a way to live a meaningful life with the risk, as in not hide away. He has always been honest and optimistic when necessary, I trust him to be honest about this.
I think more needs to be done to help the 1.5 million who are shielding to risk assess their own conditions or else life may be on hold for some people for a really long time, waiting for something that will never come.

[Bluntness100]

Oxford do seem promising, the fact they have went into production etc is a good sign. The professor leading it. I think she had said about a month ago she was about 80 percent certain it would work at that point, there is something, I can’t recall, but I think it’s similar to other viruses or they had a starting point which had enabled it,

I suspect they will do the shielded, vulnerable and elderly first, a bit like the flu jab. People have to remember that the fatality rate for anyone under 65 is very small. 3000 dead and 95 percent of those had underlying conditions. So approx 150 healthy people.

I think a lot of people have lost sight of the fact the vast majority of people will have little to no symptoms with this disease.

Witty and valance were trying to remind people last night. So many are behaving like if they catch it it’s certain death. There is a level of hysteria going round about it. Rags like the fail calling it “killer corona” don’t help. Unions screaming keep our people safe, when if you look at the age range they already are, the focus should be on the vulnerable.

[Sunshinegirl82]

There are several coronavirus vaccines for animals though so we understand them well enough to produce those.

I can understand the money arguments but in some ways it’s why I’m so hopeful for Oxford. They started working in this in January as a lab project, thought they’d write a paper. They will operate on a not for profit basis during the period of the pandemic of the vaccine works.

Lots of ifs bugs and maybes and always the possibility that it won’t work (and that none of the possible vaccines will work) but it seems like we’ve got a pretty good shot and I can’t see why people aren’t happier about that! I don’t think it changes what we do in any practical way.

[Bluntness100]

I’m not sure why people aren’t happier either. I think Witty/Vallance last night was maybe indicating a cure will be widely available first, before a vaccine, but it could have been the opposite way round. Body language is hard to decipher.They said one or the other.

The Uk have been rather secretive about this all along. They talk in broad highlights and give no details, one of the drugs we were trialling, for example, I heard it in trumps conference, we said nothing, one of the female advisors said the scientific community was trialling certain drugs, and that the USA and the Uk were doing the same one. We said nothing other than we start trials.

Only when they wanted to widely extend it did they talk about it, one had approx a thousand people in it about a month ago, so assume more now.

I think they don’t talk about it, because they don’t want to then say it didn’t work, or have people demand it and put pressure on. So they keep it quiet.

But when both Vallance and witty say we will have a vaccine or a therapy soon, I for one believe them, I don’t believe both these men would say it if they didn’t think it to be true, and I would be shocked if they didn’t habe all the facts on the trials.


I do wonder if the plan to open up the Uk is also partially based on when they think treatment will be available. They did say if they didn’t get a treatment or vaccine we would need to live with the disease, but they thought that unlikely but could give no guarantees. I think it was in response to Beth rigby.

Factually less and less people are dying in hospital now, more and more in care homes, where treatment they may be trialling won’t be available.

They seem to be trialling three different types, one for early symptoms, one for mid and one for severely ill people.

As they said last night, infectious diseases have hit the human race many many times and we have always been very good at being able to beat it. And science moves on constantly. It’s not the same as ten years ago, never mind a hundred and on this one there is unlimited funding and an unprecedented global effort for the scientific community to work together.

[ClimbDad]

I know I’m in the minority here but I would trust Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance about as far as I could throw them. They’ve given some of the worst scientific and medical advice I’ve ever heard. From there’s no risk of transmission at mass events to even raising the prospect of using a lethal live virus to develop herd immunity. They are arrogant, mediocre scientists who were not sufficiently cautious in the face of a new virus.

I wish people would stop focusing on the death rate. People are going to be left with debilitating lifelong conditions. And as this article demonstrates the immune system struggles to shake off the disease. There is every reason to plan for a society in which a vaccine isn’t a reality for many years.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-recovery.html#click=t.co/ZrJxECj9kQ" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-recovery.html#click=t.co/ZrJxECj9kQ

[Humphriescushion]

I do believe a vaccine will be found. However when Matt hancock said by August i thought that was some kind of deflection. I dont believe it will be then, not in any meaningful way - does he mean the capacity to find a vaccine?

I read this article before he said this and it seemed to make sense to me and offered me some hope that companies were working together on this.
www.euronews.com/2020/04/14/coronavirus-vaccine-pharma-giants-gsk-and-sanofi-team-up-to-find-covid-19-solution

[Bluntness100]

They are arrogant, mediocre scientists who were not sufficiently cautious in the face of a new virus

I think the opposite is starting to emerge to be true. The death rate is likely to be half a percent, the huge majority of people with little to no symptoms, and they were acting on the info at the time.

It seems they may have been right all along.

[Moondust001]

I think Witty/Vallance last night was maybe indicating a cure will be widely available first, before a vaccine
I don't know what was said, but I would be very interested in evidence that they suggested or said that a cure would be available at all, never mind before a vaccine. Are you not confusing that with a treatment? Because, to date, nobody has ever found "a cure". A cure implies that you catch it, you take a tablet, and it goes away. That can only be promised by snake oil salesmen. If there is ever going to be a cure it is almost certainly decades away - we can't yet cure the common cold and have been working on that one for a very long time.

A treatment is something different, and it reduces the severity of the illness to allow the body's own immune system a better chance of fighting it off. There are many trials going on around the world, and it is anticipated that some of the early results of these will start filtering in in June. Treatments would certainly be a huge step forward, especially for those with the worst cases. But they aren't a magic bullet, and won't cure the sickness, nor will they necessarily work for everyone. When tamiflu was used during the Swine Flu outbreak, it definitely helped some people. Others reported that the treatment was worse than the flu.

[Beautiful3]

It will be gone by the time the vaccinations been made!

[IncrediblySadToo]

It will be gone by the time the vaccinations been made!

Wouldn't that be fantastic. Especially if the make a vaccination by the end of the year

More chance of getting the vaccine first though.

[F1ftyCents]

Saw a disturbing thing on BBC news channel last night (US and UK experts interviewed)helpfully just before I went to bed saying it’s quite likely they won’t. They’ve never found a vaccine for any carona virus, it’s quite tricky, you’ll need billions of doses and a huge percentage take up rate to make it effective(90s). They seemed to be infurring we’ll be living like this for a long time to come. I went to bed wondering if we’ll ever see my mil again( she lives a long way away) and if my mum in her 70s who doesn’t drive is now going to spend the rest of her life under lock down and never leave our town.

[F1ftyCents]

They were also pointing out that SARS was contained, this hasn’t been.

[ErrolTheDragon]

There is a vaccine for pneumonia.

Yes and no... there is more than one cause of pneumonia, there are vaccines which protect against some of them. Babies and over 65 yr olds are routinely vaccinated.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/pneumococcal-vaccination/

[Sunshinegirl82]

Because SARS was contained they shelved the vaccine. We have vaccines for coronaviruses in animals and have had for years.

No one will say - yep 100% we’ll get a vaccine because nothing is ever certain but i think there is every reason to be hopeful.

[F1ftyCents]

These experts and interviewer really didn’t seem hopeful. Vaccine more a clutch in the dark sort of thing. You also apparently need such a high percentage to take it up to make it work and billions of doses around the world making supply an issue.

Was my first dose of reality. This is going to be it for years.

[Sunshinegirl82]

You will need a high uptake to create herd immunity and manufacturing enough doses will take time. If you vaccinate the clinically vulnerable and elderly though you should significantly reduce deaths which would obviously be hugely positive.

I don’t think everyone will be vaccinated by Christmas but for every scientist who is pessimistic there is one who is optimistic. Yes, we’ll have to live with it in the short to medium term but with a fair wind we might have something working by the end of the year and distributable next year. That would be a huge step forward.

If not, then we carry on with testing, tracing and isolating to keep infection rates down. They never found a vaccine for the Spanish flu and whilst a lot of people died and we would obviously hope that doesn’t happen again the virus didn’t plague our lives indefinitely.

[F1ftyCents]

Was telling BJ is now saying a vaccine might never happen, makes you wonder what he’s been told behind the scenes. I’m no scientist but they were explaining why a carona vaccine is so hard to make. Had an analogy I forget now.

The lack of a medically proven predecessor vaccine for any type of human coronavirus must be a bit of a worry.

Happy to receive reassurance from those more scientific, in fact please do. I might sleep better tonight.

[MarshaBradyo]

Trials are happening atm aren’t they it will be interesting to hear how it’s going.

[HandfulOfFlowers]

It would be wonderful if a vaccine could be developed, but some people are pinning all their hopes on it, and using its arrival to pinpoint the time at which we should stop isolating. Whilst this is the ideal solution, the timeframes involved make it an impractical one, so a lack of vaccine shouldn't be used as a reason to maintain lockdown conditions indefinitely.

[F1ftyCents]

But what is the alternative?

[onemorepringle]

Some of us just want a bit of hope.

[Sunshinegirl82]

www.city-journal.org/covid-19-our-attitude-toward-vaccines

This is a helpful article I think. I agree we have to proceed as I there won’t be a vaccine. We can’t lockdown until there is even if things go as well as I hope they might.

[Hearhoovesthinkzebras]

They've already said that one big problem with developing a vaccine is the amount of time it takes to see whether it actually works, especially during a lockdown. It is unethical to expose someone to a potentially life threatening virus just to see whether an experimental vaccine protects them from the virus. So, you have to wait and see whether the trial subjects catch the virus naturally. But that is very difficult to test because a) so few people in the population have caught it and b) during lockdown there wasn't much chance of exposure.

Basically,if the trial volunteers don't catch the virus how do you know that it was just because they weren't exposed to it, rather than the experimental vaccine protected them? That takes a lot of time to study.

I heard an interview with a scientist in America who develops vaccines and he was talking about having to test any potential vaccine across a wide sample of the population in order to see how different populations respond to it eg children, the elderly, pregnant women, maybe those with certain illnesses. They need to know that a vaccine is safe for everyone and whether it works for each group. We already give different versions of the flu vaccine to different groups for example. He was not hopeful that the first vaccine out of a lab would turn out to actually be "the one".

I'm not trying to be pessimistic. I'm trying to be realistic.

I am very confident that they will find a treatment. They understand how this virus works at a cellular level and how it's affects areas of the body that they weren't previously aware of eg causing blood clots to form in arteries, and causing vasoconstriction particularly in the pulmonary artery. That gives targets for drug treatments and some are apparently showing promise.