Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[curl-6]

chakkra said:

curl-6 said:

While you're right that it's an emergency, which is why this process is taking months rather than years as it normally would, it's just too risky to administer something to millions of people before we know for sure that it is safe or even effective.

One such risk is that if we rush out a vaccine without proper testing that only works in say 75% of cases but has a 1% chance of killing diabetics, not only could hundreds of thousands die from it, but the immunity coverage would be too low to contain COVID-19's spread anyway, and then once a truly safe and effective vaccine comes along, people will be too scared to take it because of the fallout from the rushed one.

We need to be absolutely sure it works and is safe before we give it to millions of people, the consequences are just too great.

The reason the vaccines we have now for other illnesses are reliable and safe is precisely because testing is so rigorous.

Oh, I totally understand the risks, but I still think it is totally worth it. Besides, it looks like they are already doing it:

"Another way to accelerate vaccine development is to combine phases. Some coronavirus vaccines are now in Phase I/II trials, for example, in which they are tested for the first time on hundreds of people."

They're calling it "combining phases" but it sounds to me that they are just skipping phase I.

They're still conducting the necessary tests, just concurrently instead of separately. As you say it is an emergency, so things are being sped along in every way that is safely possible.

But there's a difference between administering a vaccine candidate to hundreds of carefully selected people, and administering it to millions of people in the general population.

The last thing we can afford to do in this situation is erode public confidence by releasing a vaccine that's not properly tested.