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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
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 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.
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. 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. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin.
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