National Geographic explains that there are more than 150 coronavirus vaccines now being developed around the world. Hopes, therefore, are high that to ease the global crisis, at least one will be brought to market in record time!
The magazine continues, “Several efforts are underway to help make that possible, including the U.S. government’s (and President Trump’s) Operation Warp Speed Initiative, which has pledged $10 billion and aims to develop and deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective coronavirus vaccine by January 2021.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) is coordinating their efforts to deliver a vaccine in hopes of producing two billion doses by the end of 2021.
These researched vaccines hope to instruct the immune system to develop a defense stronger than the result from a natural infection. The candidates also are aiming for fewer side effect health consequences.
How is this accomplished?
Reiterating info from my Part I on this topic, some vaccines use a killed or weakened state of the coronavirus. Others use a part of the coronavirus in the form of a protein or a fragment of it. Still other vaccine shots will transfer these same proteins into a different virus that is most likely unable to cause a disease. Finally, some vaccines, under development, send pieces of the CoVid19’s genetic material into the vaccinated body cell/s, hoping that temporarily the patient can make their own coronavirus proteins to stimulate an immune system response.
With the normal length of time for a vaccine development of 5 to 10 years, what then are the possibilities of these present researched vaccines becoming available in 5 to 10 months?
Investor’s Business Daily/IBD (week of August 24, 2020) asked this question of chosen immunology experts in the newspaper’s article titled “Covid Vaccines Aim High.” Here are some of the experts’ responses. One comment stated “Vaccines won’t eliminate CoVid, but we’ll get yearly shots to ward off the disease and create a much milder course of the infection.”
Most observers put the best-case scenario of successful vaccine candidates as late this year or in early 2021, in agreement with our government’s projection as stated in my opening paragraph.
A half-dozen experts say “The most realistic worst case is a year or so later.” IBD adds, “That’s a short time in vaccine land, but eons for a world economy in trouble.”
The following are three leading contestants, all in their Phase 3 of development.
1. AstraZeneca, partnering with the University of Oxford (England), with $1.2 billion in funding from the U.S. government. The company, under their best-case scenario, is promising their first doses by October, 2020. *Look for a possible delay on this delivery due recently to their Phase 3 being shut down briefly with one participant showing a neurological problem. However, upon thorough investigation into the situation, their Phase 3 has now been successfully resumed.
2. Moderna, partnering with U.S. health agencies, with $2.48 billion in funding from the U.S. government. The company is promising, under their best-case scenario, millions of doses per month in 2020.
3. Pfizer, partnering with BioNTech, and receiving $1.95 billion from the U.S. government, is promising their best-case scenario with 100 million doses of vaccine being delivered by the end of 2020.
However, all of our experts are skeptical about the three items that a successful SARS-CoV-2 vaccine virus must have: be safe, be widely effective, and be broadly available. IBD concludes this Part III/A of two parts with the following quote: “In the reasonable worst-case timeline, the initial coronavirus vaccines simply fail on the first two scores, or issues arise in manufacturing a billion-plus doses quickly.”
Russia and China have recently claimed to be leaders in developing their vaccines. However, Stage 3 is missing in both of the two countries’ final testing phases to assure safe vaccine usage.
