We Had the Vaccine the Whole Timehttps://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.htmlYou may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial. This is — as the country and the world are rightly celebrating — the fastest timeline of development in the history of vaccines. It also means that for the entire span of the pandemic in this country, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans, we had the tools we needed to prevent it .
To be clear, I don’t want to suggest that Moderna should have been allowed to roll out its vaccine in February or even in May, when interim results from its Phase I trial demonstrated its basic safety. ...
Could things have moved faster from design to deployment? Given the grim prospects for winter, it is tempting to wonder. Perhaps, in the future, we will. But given existing vaccine infrastructure, probably not. Already, as Baylor’s Peter Hotez pointed out to me, “Operation Warp Speed†meant running clinical trials simultaneously rather than sequentially, manufacturing the vaccine at the same time, and authorizing the vaccine under “emergency use†in December based only on preliminary data that doesn’t track the long-term durability of protection or even measure the vaccine’s effect on transmission (only how much it protects against disease). ... And while most American scientists worried about the speed of those rollouts, and the risks they implied, our approach to the pandemic here raises questions, too, about the strange, complicated, often contradictory ways we approach matters of risk and uncertainty during a pandemic — and how, perhaps, we might think about doing things differently next time. That a vaccine was available for the entire brutal duration may be, to future generations trying to draw lessons from our death and suffering, the most tragic, and ironic, feature of this plague.
OK, I'll say the name this article dishonestly declined to say, New York Magazine's
He Who Must Not Be Named,
President Donald Trump. The Trump Administration's NIH (and possibly DARPA) had been working with Moderna long before China's SARS-CoV-19 outbreak. That existing relationship plus Moderna's technology led to the Covid-19 vaccine being developed by mid January, NIH announcing they were working with a company (= Moderna) on January 20th, samples for Phase I testing being delivered by Moderna February 26th, and Phase I testing being begun March 16th.
Other than that the vaccine had been developed by January 13th, every milestone date cited above has been posted here on TBR for months! If an ordinary guy whose job is not journalism - little old me - could find all that information, why did New York Magazine not learn it - or withhold publishing it - until now? The reason is obvious:
He Who Must Not Be Named, Orange Man Bad.
No one I've heard has suggested or even hinted that any of the leading Covid-19 vaccines should have been approved untested or after Phase I tests (though I think Russia approved its first vaccine after it Phase I type test). Much of the time-saving in OWS was wringing out the bureaucracy induced delays between test phases, delay in production, and distribution. There is in OWS a risk-benefit calculation: the benefit of introducing the vaccine quickly amidst a pandemic; the risk of having 6-8 months and less of safety data. Parallel to that, US citizens can make their own risk-benefit choices (unlike, for example, China's army).
