> An issue that I basically never see come up is - why not administer the vaccine earlier on (pre-approval) to the most vulnerable? if P(death|vaccine) < P(death|covid) then it seems really barbaric not to give it.
Not sure, but I would think it comes down to hospitals not being overrun in the case of a widescale negative response to the vaccine. But since the whole thing is a game of probabilities, I do share your view.
You could distribute it in limited batches to only the most vulnerable which should reduce any risk of that. I think the most vulnerable are in any case most likely to already be heavily using the health services anyway (and would be the ones engaging them the most if they caught the virus).
Because of ethics in drug development. And these rules are there for a reason. Not sure what could have been done better with Covid vaccines, we have three now roughly a year after the first cases. All of them work and are either certified or on the track to soon be. We even have four if you include the Russian one.
Summing up the ethics part: Studies include volunteers in a controlled environment. Just administering un approved stuff to people means using people as guinea pigs. I don't want that, and it is doubtful we would have gained anything. Because now it is "simple" distribution and production problem.
'Because of ethics' and 'these rules are there for a reason' are not arguments, they're 'shut up' encoded. Present arguments please.
The progress of the vaccine has been incredible compared to usual, but that doesn't mean more could have been done. Every death is a tragedy.
People are constantly used as guinea pigs... as long as there is informed consent as per the Nuremberg code it's fine. Not suggesting anybody would be forced or ill-informed.
So back to my argument - you can make a reasonable guess at estimating P(death|vaccine) vs. P(death|covid) and set a big margin, then offer people to VOLUNTARILY agree to take it who are most at risk of dying.
The average age of death in the UK is 82 mostly with co-morbidities. I am sure many of these dead would have been happy to take the chance.
And in the case of the mRNA vaccines this not some trivial difference - some were developed within weeks/months, but took nearly a year longer to pass all testing.
It's really obvious that pandemics need different handling than the 'lock down and loads of people die anyway, both from the virus and the consequences of lockdown while ruining the economy + wait 2yrs for a vaccine to be fully distributed' approach we've got.
I hope lessons are learned from covid (I'm actually optimistic they will be, in countries other than the one where the virus emerged anyway).
So you never asked anyone. The problem is, if you ignore ethics, which of course says a lot about your priorities, still two fold.
First, you have development. That was arguably the fastest vaccine development in history. Not sure what could have been done faster here.
Second, you have production and distribution. Ramping up these two doesn't make much sense before you know whether or not the vaccines work. Now they are ramped up really fast. Going "fast and breaking" things may have resulted in more people being vaccinated early on. But this small benefit would have caused tremendous issues in a couple of weeks / months. The goal is to get millions vaccinated, not just a few elderly so that some people can go out partying again without feeling bad.
>So you never asked anyone. The problem is, if you ignore ethics, which of course says a lot about your priorities, still two fold.
This is offensive and I suggest you re-read my post (as well as the HN comment guidelines). I am not ignoring ethics, I specifically mention informed consent. I also have no idea what you mean by 'so you never asked anyone' - this is a hypothetical??
>The goal is to get millions vaccinated, not just a few elderly so that some people can go out partying again without feeling bad.
You're also strawmanning me pretty hard here.
> But this small benefit would have caused tremendous issues in a couple of weeks / months.
Not even sure how you come to this conclusion (you seem 100% certain that distributing the now-proven safe mRNA vaccine early would have caused tremendous issues, somehow).
You seem to want to be aggressive to me and strawman me as somebody who doesn't care about covid victims (my grandmother is 85 and has serious comorbidity risks thank you very much) so I am not going to respond further but I suggest you focus on arguments, not insults and dismissive comments. You can go to reddit and much of the rest of the internet for that.
So we agree to disagree. No problem for me. Regarding distribution, I saw way to many rushed logistics and supply chain initiatives in my life to know how things turn out when people cut corners for some limited early successes. I am happy authorities seem not to do that right now.
Not sure, but I would think it comes down to hospitals not being overrun in the case of a widescale negative response to the vaccine. But since the whole thing is a game of probabilities, I do share your view.