I have worked at two different companies that have been accelerated by the FDA; once during the HIV crisis for a sequencing application and at a medical imaging company that demonstrated overwhelming quality of care improvements. Acceleration is unusual but not "conspiracy level" unusual.
My former colleagues in the viral research space (the HIV team above) basically flagged this type of vaccine as our best hope for an 2021 vaccine. No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards.
Though these vaccines may get approval in 2020, they aren't really 2020 vaccines in the sense that they will have significant enough production to have an effect in 2020.
I don't work directly on vaccines, but given the number of attempts, a 2020 approval definitely seemed possible to me, and even Fauci saying that in the summer. But I've also said that it wouldn't have a significant effect in 2020.
Edit: Here is Fauci saying on May 27 that we might have a vaccine by end of year:
>No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards.
Normally vaccines take longer to develop because years of studies must be done to confirm the absence of longer-term side effects, not always because the actual vaccine development itself takes years. This requirement seems to have been bypassed for potential covid19 vaccines, allowing the vaccine to be released faster, at the expense of not having time to test for the absence of any long-term side effects (e.g. if a side effect takes 2-3 years to manifest, it's impossible to detect this with a trial that only lasts 6-12 months).
Well, like I said, the people I know are familiar with both vaccine development and have experience with FDA acceleration in times of crisis and they still thought 2021 was the earliest we would see a vaccine.
RNA vaccines as an idea are a pretty recent thing. The fact that this one exists at all is literally a first. Remarkable how quickly they've gone from mRNA as an idea that they've been working on to a full-fledged vaccine for a novel coronavirus in under a year.
“ No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards.”
I’m not in science, but friends who had colleagues more involved in biological sciences said those fellows were total skeptics that anything like 6-8 months would be possible.
Imagine if this would have happened ten years ago. Think we’d have any prayer for a vaccine? Wouldn’t be surprised if the technology didn’t even exist within some point in the last couple decades.
> I’m not in science, but friends who had colleagues more involved in biological sciences said those fellows were total skeptics that anything like 6-8 months would be possible.
Yes. I have an academic friend in a high-level biotech research role who said a vaccine wouldn't be possible in this timeframe, that we ultimately could only delay the spread but not save people, so to avoid economic harm on top we should let the virus "run its course" and kill however many it's going to kill.
Well this vaccine isn't approved yet, and there are still more testing phases left to go. So they "might be" wrong is more appropriate than "were" wrong.
I also have a lot of safety concerns about something developed this quickly.
That was the concensus ... 2021 was possible if we get really lucky and either an existing coronavirus vaccine platform could be repurposed or a RNA vaccine works out.
Just to be clear, there was a real risk that a vaccine would turn out to be impossible for this type of virus. It looks like completely dodged that bullet.
There were plenty of people, including communications from the different vaccine teams, saying a 2020 vaccine was possible as far back as this June/July. There were of course plenty of naysayers too, but the people most deeply meshed in this 'space", the actual leading vaccine teams, were bullish from very early on.
My former colleagues in the viral research space (the HIV team above) basically flagged this type of vaccine as our best hope for an 2021 vaccine. No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards.