re: #271 O say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave..

The vaccines are based on unproven technology with an astonishingly short development and testing period. That’s definitely true.

Actually it’s not true. The development and testing period for all of the COVID-19 vaccines has been about the same as any other major vaccine or drug product. It’s just that all the slack time, delays while funding sources are persuaded to cough up, staff recruitment hiccups, equipment and materials shortages, papers submitted to conferences, recruiting enough volunteers for double-blind tests etc. would normally have stretched the interval between first prototype samples to shelf-ready product to five years and more. Instead all this has happened in nine months or so with the delays removed by brute force and money because we’re in a pandemic.

The mRNA vaccine tech is new-ish but it’s one of those things that’s been in development but chronically short of money and equipment and researchers for decades, it’s not a movie-style instant technical miracle that just didn’t exist a year ago. The other vaccines are all proven tech, from inactivated virus through to modified xenoviruses like AstraZeneca. Even the Russian Sputnik V vaccine is based on existing vaccines, not even modified from their original production versions IIRC (their effectiveness in providing protection against COVID-19 is another matter).