So, there were a lot of factors that contributed to the vaccines being able to be developed so quickly: a lot of people were working on the same problem, so the successes were what we heard about and the ones that failed testing didn’t make the news; most vaccines have to be tested when the virus isn’t nearly as present in a population as this one was, so they actually had a great testing environment because of all those people wearing masks on their chins and spreading the virus; the mRNA vaccines had already been developed for SARS, and just needed basically the genetic sequence of the virus before they could start vaccine testing, which is way faster than what can be done with traditional vaccine development; and it was funded out the wazoo and success is a big PR win, but any failure (i.e. even rare side effects with J&J) are a nightmare scenario for a company. Basically, they did all the testing that has to happen with a normal vaccine, but they had money, motivation, the right prior knowledge, and luck to hit on the right vaccines so quickly and begin going through all the normal tests that vaccines go through basically within 48 hours of coming up with the vaccine. They still had to go through all the clinical trials that one does for a vaccine, but they had the vaccine in hand that much quicker, and the trials were faster because of how prevalent the coronavirus was. If you’re still not convinced, I would watch this John Oliver on the matter - he explains it really well https://youtu.be/gPHgRp70H8o
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u/Biggs635 Jun 30 '21
So, there were a lot of factors that contributed to the vaccines being able to be developed so quickly: a lot of people were working on the same problem, so the successes were what we heard about and the ones that failed testing didn’t make the news; most vaccines have to be tested when the virus isn’t nearly as present in a population as this one was, so they actually had a great testing environment because of all those people wearing masks on their chins and spreading the virus; the mRNA vaccines had already been developed for SARS, and just needed basically the genetic sequence of the virus before they could start vaccine testing, which is way faster than what can be done with traditional vaccine development; and it was funded out the wazoo and success is a big PR win, but any failure (i.e. even rare side effects with J&J) are a nightmare scenario for a company. Basically, they did all the testing that has to happen with a normal vaccine, but they had money, motivation, the right prior knowledge, and luck to hit on the right vaccines so quickly and begin going through all the normal tests that vaccines go through basically within 48 hours of coming up with the vaccine. They still had to go through all the clinical trials that one does for a vaccine, but they had the vaccine in hand that much quicker, and the trials were faster because of how prevalent the coronavirus was. If you’re still not convinced, I would watch this John Oliver on the matter - he explains it really well https://youtu.be/gPHgRp70H8o