WHO assures it will have an answer in the upcoming weeks.

I think it's a joke. They say the speed of development is due to the improved technological capability of humanity. If that was true why didn't they whip up a vaccine that was more than 40%-60% effective (per cdc website last I checked) for the flu in the last 80 years.

I won't get it unless I'm forced.

Yeah, saving lives is a joke. ¬_¬

If influenza was 50 times more fatal and crippling the whole entire world for a year, I expect there would be a great deal more research and funding put towards addressing the effectiveness of its vaccines.

I'm glad that we'll soon have TWO viable SARS-CoV-2 vaccines capable of achieving over 90% effectiveness, have no issues receiving a vaccine, and wish the roll-out could be sooner.

Maybe some of the lessons learned from over 100 vaccine candidates worked on during this pandemic will include new knowledge and/or techniques that can be applied to improve effectiveness of other virus vaccines.

The FDA has already given an Emergency Use Authorization to Pfizer's vaccine and Moderna's should be soon. The first US person to get a vaccine shot happened yesterday.

Because creating a universal flu vaccine is difficult. The CDC has only been tracking Flu shot effectiveness since early 2000's. Effectiveness varies between years because there are several strains and it mutates. The decision on which strains to include in a flu shot is just an educated guess and is made in February but many times they guess wrong. I think that herd immunity for the flu is like 80% but only 40-50% ever get the vaccine. Regardless it still saves thousands of lives every year according to the experts.

COVID 19 does mutate but there is no evidence that indicates the new vaccine is less effective yet. To some extent it was rushed. Trials did limit older adults, excluded pregnant women and the young which was why there was some hesitation to giving those in assisted living the vaccine early on. I will eventually get a vaccine shot but I suspect it will be awhile till my "number" is called so will wait and see how things develop. We now know that those with extreme allergies should not take the Pfizer vaccine.

I certainly hope the vaccines work, but I wouldn't want to be the first to take one. But then, given initial the scarcity, I certainly won't be.

As an aside, I'm old enough to remember grainy black and white pictures of children in iron lungs from polio on my television, then along came the Salk vaccine, followed by the Sabin vaccine, and almost overnight polio was no longer an epidemic. I also remember how eagerly my parents took me to the doctor to get the vaccines as soon as they were available.

I'm all for vaccines. I just want to be certain that, given how rapidly these ones were developed, they live up to their billing.

As I understand it, the Pfizer vaccine hasn't been fully tested for all age groups yet. It's being rolled out early because it's considered an emergency measure (for three countries so far). The biggest problem with it is that it will reduce or eliminate the symptoms but won't stop infected people spreading it, so it won't be contributing to herd immunity. Maybe it should be considered as a pre-emptive treatment rather than a vaccine. The Moderna vaccine is similar but I'm not sure how its schedule is going.

Having said that, as soon as it's been cleared for my cohort (age and chronic disease) I'll be joining the orderly queue with my sleeve rolled up. Unless a similarly effective vaccine that does prevent further spread becomes available.

As an example of what can cause a vaccine's rejection, Australia just stopped further development of a very promising candidate because it gave some (don't know what fraction) false positive results to HIV testing.

There's a lot of reasons why this vaccine was developed much quicker than other medicine/vaccines, but none of them is "improved technological capability" afaik.
It's a global cooperation with every party, every country interested in the same outcome, and as little bureaucratic hurdles as possible. That speeds things up quite a bit!
But it has to be said that certain long time testing has not been done, and therefore certain long time (side) effects are not known yet.

Whenever my overly cautious government tells me I'm eligible, I'll get it. Although it currently isn't clear to me which variant, the German or the British one, or maybe something else entirely.

I shall certainly take it if it's offered to me, though I don't expect that any time soon. I'm only 75 after all .

I'm not particularly surprised that these vaccines all went through their test phase pretty fast. It was an economic as well as a health emergency, so everybody worked their socks off.

As long as it's safe and effective, then I'd have no objection getting a vaccine for covid.

It was in the drug companies interest to develop vaccines as quickly as possible for covid for a number of reasons, including trying to beat their competition, as well as the cooperation of universities, drug companies, government and other researchers that would normally work within their own groups. So it doesn't surprise me that the potential vaccines have been developed far quicker than the time it would normally take to develop one.

At least one of the new vaccines (I don't know which one) used a "challenge trial" instead of a normal Stage III trial. This involves giving the vaccine (or a placebo) to a hundred or so healthy young volunteers and then injecting them with the virus. If only a few of the vaccinated people get the disease, the vaccine works. Such a trial can be carried out quite quickly whereas a normal Stage III involves waiting for the experimental subjects to fall ill by themselves, which requires a long time and about 3,000 volunteers!

Challenge trials are not usually allowed for obvious ethical reasons, but permission was given in this case because speeding things up would save a lot more lives in the long run.

You think that would of happened if it wasn't for the government losing billions in taxes as a result of shutting down the economy and therefore approving fast-tracked trails, then fast-tracking "emergency approval" of use of the vaccines? Me thinks not. It just goes to show when large sums of money are involved, it may as well literally have a mouth...

(not saying covid is a hoax BTW)

This. It's "just business". The most likely explanation for the faster development is that this is competitive race - and that the pace has been upped as some regulatory stops have been pulled out... I hope it doesn't become a race to the bottom.

Being both pragmatic and mistrustful of big pharma, I have weighed up the pros and cons and will wait for other willing test mules to have the vaccine(s) first......

As far as I can tell, it's just that they haven't specifically tested for that, so it's unknown whether or not it will stop spreading. There's still a reasonable chance that it will contribute to herd immunity.

Saving lives is not a joke and I don't appreciate the insinuation that I do. Trusting something they tossed together that fast is though. I'm seriously concerned that the so called "cure" (vaccine) will end up being worse than the problem.

I hope I'm wrong. But the numbers just aren't there. 90% based on a 30-40k sample size? Out of 7-8 billion that isn't even a sneeze in either direction. I've already seen an article or two from the UK about how the vaccine causes problems by many with allergies, and they can't explain why. Damn near everyone has some form of allergies these days. Then you add whatever long term effects there are likely to be. It's just too many unanswered questions.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer or whatever those people are called. I just expect more proof before I get something injected in me. I'm also an extreme pessimist and haven't got a ton of faith in man's abilities. We usually have a way of making things worse with our "progress".

You don't say...

I don't think computers existed in the stone ages, caves did though... wanna live in one?

Depends on how you look at it, and what exactly you're talking about. But I'm glad we progressed from rubbing sticks together though...