Sarah Gibbard Cook
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Vaccines: There’s Many a Slip

6/22/2020

5 Comments

 
Like many at risk from coronavirus, I expect to hunker down till we get a vaccine. When will that be? Polio history brings to mind my mother’s saying, there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.

Approval. Licensing a new vaccine depends on tests to prove it safe and effective. Salk’s polio vaccine was licensed, and boxes of vaccine shipped, the very day field trial results were announced. Though the public acclaimed the rush to market, some scientists thought it reckless.

Manufacture. Working with biologicals is iffy. Two manufacturers of Salk-style vaccine agreed to scale up production to supply every country that didn’t already use it. Technical difficulties kept them from fulfilling the contract on schedule.

​Distribution. A vaccine won’t reach you and me the day it leaves the plant. Much depends on supply, priorities, and wild cards beyond human control. When ash from a volcano in Iceland closed European airports, at least 15 million doses of polio vaccine bound for West Africa were grounded in Paris and Frankfurt.
5 Comments
Rebecca Cuningham link
6/22/2020 03:17:09 pm

So, you're saying it will be a while? Do you think a year is a good estimate? How long did it take to develop the polio vaccine? Thanks, R

Reply
Sarah Cook link
6/23/2020 07:47:00 am

Rebecca, I'm not so much saying it will take a long time as that there is no way to know until it happens. If Fauci says a vaccine might be ready in November if everything goes right, that's probably true. It's the "if everything goes right" that's impossible to forecast. Polio vaccine took well over a decade from the founding of the March of Dimes (which funded the research) in 1938 until Salk's vaccine was licensed in 1955 and Sabin's in 1962. Much more is known now about immunology and how to make a vaccine, so much faster is a reasonable possibility - but not a certainty.

Reply
Rebecca link
6/25/2020 06:04:22 pm

Thanks, Sarah. Fingers crossed that a Covid-19 vaccine is on its way soon.

Walter Hassenpflug
6/27/2020 07:15:29 am

I have been following research reports from Gilead company. Company has been in business for a long time. They have been testing a new vaccine at numerous venues. Results show 98% to 100% "healing" of patients within a 3 week period.

What disturbs me is the lack of concern of so many people who believe they will not get the virus. Classic example is the Myrtle Beach "invasion" by so many young people who become infected and then return to their home states and infect so many "back home."
Twenty one of young people returned to my neighboring Preston County. The infection rate is spiraling in that county.

Other counties in West Virginia are experiencing the results of being infected by young people returning from that beach.

We all have been following guidelines from state and national experts. But there are too many "unsmart" folks who choose to ignore the guidelines.

My wife Sandra is the Director of Nursing at neighboring Marion County Health Department. Residents can be tested for the virus. Some of those testing positive refuse to furnish information about how they became infected, who have they been around, etc. And so the virus spread continues.

Reply
Sarah Cook link
6/28/2020 07:14:41 am

Walter, so sorry to hear cases spiraling in Preston County. Young people know they're immortal, or so it seems, and it didn't help that a few months ago the epidemiology seemed to suggest only older folks or those with underlying conditions got sick. As we learn more, with young people transmitting infection or dying or having lasting lung damage, it's scary to see them still act as though it can't affect them.

The refusal to provide contact information is shocking. I hadn't heard of that before. Contact tracing has to be so central to any form of virus control. Your wife is certainly on the front lines with this. Glad you and she are staying safe and well.

Gilead's remdesivir does look promising. Antivirals are still a relatively new thing in my mind. For so long there was nothing to be done about a virus unless you stopped it up front with a vaccine. We really need both/and, especially since nothing is 100% effective and nothing is 100% free of risk.




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    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

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