I remember that time very well. My mother took part in the March of Dimes where moms would walk their neighborhoods asking for dimes to fund a cure. It was a scary time. The fear of having to live in an iron lung is something I'll never forget.

One-Eyed Fat Man said:

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Ok. Say we have a vaccine in 18 months. How much needs to be produced? Enough to vaccinate the world's population? It would seem so since cv is so contagious.

How do you deal with the anti-vaxxers?
How do you distribute it in developing nations with few roads, no a lack of electricity (does it require refrigeration?)

I'm not sure having a vaccine solves all the problems.

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Estimates of R0 suggest we need 50-70% for herd immunity. The antivax movement has dropped vaccination rates to the low 90s which is a problem for far more contagious things like the measles.

Still, there is Supreme Court case law (Jacobson 1905) that says the govt can force vaccinations in an epidemic. Based on the above, I don't think we need to in this case, but the antivaxxers are super afraid that the govt decides to force the issue.

Tx-Ag2010 said:

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oragator said:

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Not for nothing, but when Salk made the polio vaccine, he got permission from the feds to make his final clinical trial a volunteer effort nationally, and 2 nearly million people signed up. Wouldn't be surprised to see something like that here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114166/

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I will definitely not be signing up for a volunteer vaccine without some testing on its effect.

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Final trial. Means we would go through phase 1 and phase 2 first.

FrioAg 00 said:

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That Oxford announcement was pure hubris, no substance there to support their statement.

I believe 4 potential vaccines (including one from Oxford) are currently in stage 1 trials, expected to run for 90 days each (earliest is in Day 30). The FDA is likely to combine stage 2 and stage 3 (effective eliminating stage 2, the small double blinded study). So 1 of these 4 could potentially be approved for production as early as 6-7 months from now.

The govt and Gates are building manufacturing capability for the most promising ones in parallel - taking some financial risk in order to minimize the time between approval and availability.

There are dozens of potentials still moving towards Phase 1, but obviously they are a few months behind the leaders in the race. It's hard to see any of these available before the Spring if they are the winner.

Personally I am most hopeful on Moderna - uses a totally different technology invented when seeking vaccine for MERS. It uses MRNA to fight a virus, which have historically been so difficult. They would be the soonest and I think their technology is the most promising.

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I saw something that said we had 3-4 in phase 3 already. I assume that was a mistake and actually referencing the phase 1 trials.

I know we started phase 1 weeks ago, and that usually takes months as I think the first one being tried had a first injection followed by a second a month later.

BiochemAg97 said:

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FrioAg 00 said:

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That Oxford announcement was pure hubris, no substance there to support their statement.

I believe 4 potential vaccines (including one from Oxford) are currently in stage 1 trials, expected to run for 90 days each (earliest is in Day 30). The FDA is likely to combine stage 2 and stage 3 (effective eliminating stage 2, the small double blinded study). So 1 of these 4 could potentially be approved for production as early as 6-7 months from now.

The govt and Gates are building manufacturing capability for the most promising ones in parallel - taking some financial risk in order to minimize the time between approval and availability.

There are dozens of potentials still moving towards Phase 1, but obviously they are a few months behind the leaders in the race. It's hard to see any of these available before the Spring if they are the winner.

Personally I am most hopeful on Moderna - uses a totally different technology invented when seeking vaccine for MERS. It uses MRNA to fight a virus, which have historically been so difficult. They would be the soonest and I think their technology is the most promising.

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I saw something that said we had 3-4 in phase 3 already. I assume that was a mistake and actually referencing the phase 1 trials.

I know we started phase 1 weeks ago, and that usually takes months as I think the first one being tried had a first injection followed by a second a month later.

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Per clinicaltrials.gov, there is currently only 1 vaccine that has undergone phase 1 trial. Recruitment has finished on that one. The follow up period for the trial is 6 months. They should start recruiting for the phase 2 trial in the next couple days. The predicted recruitment start date was for April 12th.

Edit: Scratch that, found 2 more that are currently recruiting for phase 1 trials

I think it's still just the 4, unless they've had more start since last week. And the Oxford one is likely ahead in Europe of where it is with the FDA.

Keep in mind phase 1 just has to demonstrate safety, so you'd expect really novel technologies like Moderna to take longer than those that are more similar to existing vaccines.

Phase 2 and 3 are both the same trying to show efficacy, Phase 3 is just normally much bigger and the results tracked longer. My understanding is that the FDA is trying to combine this into one phase.

If I were betting on odds of success, and I've run this by a Virologist I know who is funded by the NIH, I would place my bets on Moderna and the UPMC vaccine. Neither is a sure thing but both are very promising from what they've shown in the lab.

lmarcus said:

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There is a faster way of doing this: (and we now have two drugs that seem effective if given early on: Kaletra and Remdesivir ) as well as several antibody tests


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00927-3

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I would volunteer for this.

lmarcus said:

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There is a faster way of doing this: (and we now have two drugs that seem effective if given early on: Kaletra and Remdesivir ) as well as several antibody tests


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00927-3

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We have the ability to test immune response and antibody titer from a blood sample. Could also take serum and see if it is protective against infection of cells in vitro. Probably still want to do a test to see if it is protective in vivo, but at least if you did a in depth analysis before, you could pick vaccines most likely to be successful before injecting people with virus.