@TheLastStarfighter
I get it OP. I hadn't realised how much I had been looking at the Oxford trial as light at the end of the tunnel, until I read that it was paused last night and it really hit me.
If nothing else, at least I am now more aware that I was pinning my hopes on it.
Hopefully all will turn out fine, but if not then eventually there will be either another vaccine or a very effective treatment.
Psychologically we all cope with this situation by creating mental points of reference in terms of progress.
A lot of the problem we have now is really about how the government weren't honest from the outset about how long this would last and many people have felt that when the original lockdown ended that was it.
It never was.
I think its created false beliefs and expectations tbh.
For those who see the importance of a vaccine, its quite natural to look at this trial as being the end. But it needs some context too.
Even if a vaccine is approved fairly quickly (by that i mean by the end of the year which is potentially optimistic), we still have to role it out and the logistics of vaccinating our entire population are horrendous. We cant manage the capacity of our track and trace system at present. We will need a priority system, so someone has to work that out, and rank everyone by need. Then you need to set up locations for vaccinations, taking into account not everyone has access to a car or may not be able to afford public transport to a centralised location for their whole family, a booking /rebooking system that a) works b) doesnt crash on launch, youve got to staff it with trained people, you need the relevant PPE and equipment to administer the vaccine etc etc.
Realistically? I think the best case scenario is probably role out is likely to start out next spring, and continue throughout the summer and into next autumn.
But it isnt all doom and gloom to say this. Just realistic, and thats not the whole picture anyway.
The most obvious point is that every case does mean that natural immunity in the population will increase over time even if we dont hit herd immunity levels. That will hopefully start to eventually slow transmission. Ideally we dont want everyone to get it and we want to limit the death rate, but in the interrim a slow ticking over of people catching the virus isnt a complete disaster. We want to avoid spikes and the vulnerable getting it, but arguably we do want to increase natural immunity regardless of the vaccines eventual completion date, precisely because we dont know when that will be.
In the meantime i think we are more likely to see developments in identifying people who are highest risk much better through other avenues of research. We could well see people with high risk conditions being screened for specific risk markers before a vaccine is ready with a certain degree of success. Maybe something like a blood test which highlights a raised level of something we can already test for fairly easily. Which could reduce the need for risk management for the population as a whole. I think other areas of research such as identifying who is most at risk and ways to treat the virus once your got it have been undervalued in terms of their importance tbh.
The vaccine being approached is neither the end point nor is it the be all or end all.
And theres multiple vaccine projects out there.
In this sense even restrictions being reinstated arent necessarily a step back but a step forward in managed progress - psychologically we have to see this in this way. Thus the framing needs to be about the new restrictions supporting the schools reopening in terms of progress and importance rather than being a black and white step backward.
Im personally far more concern about government mismanagement of track and trace than a potential set back to the vaccine for this reason too.
Mismanagement is not a natural part of progress towards a conclusion. Its just poor planning, logistics and well mismanagement.