I've been thinking a little about the timeline necessary for vaccine development. From what I've managed to understand so far, the development of a vaccine can be done relatively quickly, but the testing phase takes a considerable fraction of the total time before widespread deployment is possible.
What I'm wondering is:
1. Is that testing mainly looking at safety or efficacy? Or are both equally important concerns? That is, when a vaccine is first developed are we relatively confident that it will be effective, but not confident in its safety? Or vice-versa? Or both?
2. On both of those issues, what is the degree of risk? For instance, would a newly developed but not yet tested vaccine have a 0.1% chance of adverse side-effects? 0.001%? 10%? Similarly for efficacy? What are the chances, at least based on past vaccine development data, that a newly developed vaccine won't be effective?
I think you can probably see where I'm going with this, which is that given the current situation, might it make sense to begin widespread use of a newly developed vaccine before it's been tested to the degree that we would want to test in more normal situations? The usual testing regime is based on a cost-benefit analysis in a different situation, where the benefit of deploying a vaccine early isn't all that great and we want to make sure it's as safe and effective as possible.
But the current situation will lead to a different cost-benefit analysis. I have no idea to what extent that would change policy, if at all, but it seems worthwhile to consider that old policies made in normal times about testing might need to be reassessed for the current situation.
What I'm wondering is:
1. Is that testing mainly looking at safety or efficacy? Or are both equally important concerns? That is, when a vaccine is first developed are we relatively confident that it will be effective, but not confident in its safety? Or vice-versa? Or both?
2. On both of those issues, what is the degree of risk? For instance, would a newly developed but not yet tested vaccine have a 0.1% chance of adverse side-effects? 0.001%? 10%? Similarly for efficacy? What are the chances, at least based on past vaccine development data, that a newly developed vaccine won't be effective?
I think you can probably see where I'm going with this, which is that given the current situation, might it make sense to begin widespread use of a newly developed vaccine before it's been tested to the degree that we would want to test in more normal situations? The usual testing regime is based on a cost-benefit analysis in a different situation, where the benefit of deploying a vaccine early isn't all that great and we want to make sure it's as safe and effective as possible.
But the current situation will lead to a different cost-benefit analysis. I have no idea to what extent that would change policy, if at all, but it seems worthwhile to consider that old policies made in normal times about testing might need to be reassessed for the current situation.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2WxNVXP
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