High Hopes for COVID-19 Vaccine, but Is It Realistic to Expect a Safe Vaccine Ready in 2020 or 2021?
Across the globe governments and pharmaceutical companies are busy working on a vaccine to make people immune against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Having the availability of a reliable vaccine would be a solution because COVID-19 seems to spread quite easily, while the majority of the world's population remains vulnerable to the virus.
A vaccine would train the immune system of people to combat the virus, thus not becoming sick, nor being contagious. Once this vaccine is widely available, lockdowns should soon be lifted, while social distancing should be relaxed.
While some analysts and policymakers are optimistic that a COVID-19 vaccine could become available before the end of 2020, others feel it might take until the second half of 2021, the earliest, before a reliable vaccine can be produced and distributed. A prolonged wait is bad news because without a vaccine or cure vulnerable people’s health is jeopardized (specifically those who have weakened immune systems such as elderly) while economies cannot return to normal.
But how realistic is it to have a COVID-19 vaccine available within a year, let alone a few months? Well, considering a vaccine for any infectious disease has never been developed in less than several years, the odds are certainly not in optimists’ favor.
Moreover, four coronaviruses have already been circulating in humans for decades (causing common cold symptoms) but there are still no vaccines for any of them. It is unclear to us why these vaccines have not been developed: is it too complicated? Or was it simply not attractive enough to invest in the development of these vaccines (because these four preexisting coronaviruses were not regarded big health risks, and thus developing a vaccine was not financially viable)?
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