I think the plan is that CSL would be able to license any vaccine for manufacture locally, which may speed things up somewhat. It could also be the case that the most vulnerable groups (elderly, frontline workers) would be prioritised which would lessen the overall risk and allow things to open up more quickly.
Agree that 2021 will likely be impacted in some way, hopefully these new restrictions in Victoria do the job and we get back to zero community transmission in a couple of months.
Not to be the merchant of doom, more talking somewhat from a devils advocate pov.
You can scale up production locally, provided the Nation that develops the Vaccine is Aus friendly, in this regard one hopes it is developed outside of China. So far the Chinese main candidate is a flop. Their candidate did not develop lasting immunity.
As far as time frames go, time is being saved in two ways, one is skipping the usual years of animal trials, the other is the ramping up of production capability. In doing so they have also cut out a lot of the checking mechanisms as per policies and protocols for the testing of medicines, especially Vaccine candidates, which are usually very stringent.
There are four promising candidates, the two making the most noise are the Oxford Vaccine and the Moderna Vaccine.
Ordinarily it takes ten years to develop vaccines with fail rate in the ninety percentile. So despite early promise, we need to brace for the reality that the odds are stacked very high in this game. Basically we have six critical months ahead of us, to wait and see if immunity lasts, and whether a second booster shot is part of that deal. And lastly obviously how safe and well tolerated the vaccine is.
People worried about the Vaccine and its risks tend to overstate the issues of skipping animal testing....they forget that even without animal trials, the only trial that matters is the human trials. I would only be concerned if I was part of a stage three or earlier trial in this context, part of the experimental phase in other words.
Unless you are part of the initial group getting the Vaccine now, without animal testing, you have nothing to worry about, provided you get vaccinated after the longitudinal data from the experimental phase is in.
The final stress part of this system is distribution and administration. At the moment a Vaccine is administered by a medical health professional with a minimum supervision period of fifteen minutes in case of an allergic reaction. Add A bunch of minutes for registration to have the vaccine.
This speaks to your point about giving a Corona Virus vaccine to the elderly first. That is almost certainly the approach they will take, you cant just say we are open for business, one and all come in, logistically that isn't realistic.
There is one big problem though, and that is that the Elderly are less responsive to vaccines generally in terms of developing immunity. We live with this fact since there is nothing we can do about it, and because the FLu mutates, therefore Vaccines have to be given yearly, and some mortality is accepted as a fact of life.
In the case of Covid, the Elderly will be best protected by a wide and extensive ninety percent uptake of the Vaccine by the general population. Protecting the elderly by removing Covid from the herd, rather than be solely reliant on the Elderly developing immunity in their immunosupressed bodies.
So Governments will have to make a choice, whether to risk the Elderly or wait until the Masses are vaccinated also.
A mass roll out would require massive resources, since up till now, vaccines are either primarily targeted at a percentage of the population (Influenza given to the over sixties primarily) or they are staggered in children by their birth dates.
So you are certainly right that they will prioritize risk groups in getting the Vaccine to work, however for it to work safely, it will have to hit the majority of citizens in a massive nation wide drive.
Factor in that a registered health professional has to administer the vaccine and monitor the patient for fifteen minutes re allergic reactions. Extrapolate that wait time over twenty five million people. It can be done, but it will be a massive undertaking and I cannot imagine it being achieved in terms of inoculating a country the size of Australia in anything shy of twelve months. Also everything is doubled if it turns out you you need a booster shot say after three months.
This is a big deal and will take a long time to solve, the NRL need to think about two years in case. That is if we are talking a return to normality, crowds in stadiums.
It will be interesting to see how many anti vaxers emerge in the playing group in this scenario and how that impacts the competition getting full clearance do away with the bubbles by health authorities. I can imagine some delays there.
