03/08/2021
Imagine you are planning to building a new house.
First, you’ll need to find and purchase the right block of land at a price that you can afford.
Then, you’ll need to find an architect who can design the home according to your wishes, whilst also complying with government safety specifications.
Of course, after that you’ll need to find a good builder who can bring your vision to fruition.
Unfortunately, the speed with which the builder can deliver your home depends on a number of things.
These include how many other jobs your builder is trying to complete concurrently. It depends on how quickly they can get raw materials from their many suppliers. It depends on the labour they have available on hand to do the tasks that need to be done. It depends on how quickly they can organise to get the certificate of occupancy issued after the job is done.
And influencing every single step of the build is the limitations of the budget you have available for the project.
The steps I describe above are the usual ones that home-builders need to go through in order to build their dream home.
But now, imagine the following.
The land has been in your possession for years, thanks to a wise purchase you made in your younger days when you recognised that property was a savvy future investment.
You even had an architect draw up the design for your dream home a few years ago, when you seriously considered building a forever home with your fiancé at the time. Unfortunately that relationship ended, and with it your plans changed. The designs to your dream home lay gathering dust.
But now you have a new partner. And they have very, very deep pockets. They are willing to pay whatever it takes to give you the forever home of your dreams. And because your tastes have changed a little in the years since, you want to adapt those same designs to make the home a little bigger and better. Your architect makes the changes quickly…after all, it’s still the same block and the blueprint just needs to be tweaked.
Your partner hires the best building firm money can buy. They are willing to pay extra to ensure that your home building project gets the builder’s unlimited time and resources.
So instead of the usual number of tradespeople, it’s all hand on deck. Your home is now the main priority for every electrician, plumber, tiler, framer and renderer in the town. An unlimited budget means they can work in tandem around the clock, to ensure that what would normally be delivered in six months is being delivered in one.
With an army of meticulous workers available, the speedy construction is completed without compromising on quality or safety regulations. The clever builder organises for the certificate of occupancy to be issued the day that construction is completed, to avoid any delays to your plans to move in.
And because you’ve been anticipating moving day, you’ve already purchased and stored all the necessary new furniture to fill your home of dreams, even before the certificate of occupancy was issued. Yes, it was risky to do so before receiving the keys, but you didn’t want anything standing in the way once you were given the all clear to occupy the home.
And so while other couples are frustrated by the usual constraints of building a new home, thanks to your pre-existing land, the tweaking of existing design plans, and an unlimited budget that delivers unlimited manpower and goods, you and your partner are able to move in to your dream home in a fraction of the time.
Two houses. One built slowly, the typical way. And one built in record time, thanks to the availability of every financial and creative resource available, without compromising on the building standards that need to be met. Both safe to live in.
Why have I drawn this analogy?
It’s because so many people are labouring under the misapprehension that COVID vaccines, especially those using mRNA technology, have been ‘rushed’ and hence must therefore be ‘unsafe’.
The fact is that this isn’t true. And it fails to acknowledge why these vaccines were produced in record time.
First, dedicated laboratories working with mRNA technology have been in existence for over a decade. They didn’t spring up overnight.
These companies have previously designed mRNA vaccines against HIV, rabies, Zika and influenza that have been tested in Phase I and Phase II trials, including in humans.
Previous attempts had been made to produce dedicated SARS and MERS vaccines in the aftermath of their epidemics in 2003 and 2013. These attempts were largely put on the back burner when the epidemics were swiftly brought under control. Because of the low case numbers of these diseases seen since, pharmaceutical companies were less inclined to invest in a vaccine that would only be used rarely.
But with so much data from previous attempts to design vaccines targeting the coronavirus spike proteins of the viruses causing SARS and MERS, mRNA vaccine design templates were repurposed very early on in the pandemic to create vaccines that targeted the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19. And because of the nature of the pandemic, infecting and killing millions across the globe, pharmaceutical companies and governments around the world were very much more inclined to invest heavily in vaccine development.
With unlimited resources at their finger-tips, vaccine manufacturers were able to build the expensive, custom infrastructure and systems needed to produce millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines, even while vaccine efficacy was still being determined. While large-scale manufacturing usually occurs only after the Phase III trials have reported their results, pharmaceutical companies were able to make this expensive investment earlier due to the upfront funds put forward by all those wanting to see a vaccine developed, tested, and most importantly, rolled out, with as few constraints as possible.
Sometimes that expensive investment paid off, as in the example of Pfizer and Moderna. And sometimes that early heavy financial investment yielded no return, as was the case with the CSL-University of Queensland vaccine candidate that didn’t progress further in Phase trials.
So while people may think that COVID vaccine development is rushed, these vaccines are the culmination of combination of pre-existing technology, repurposed vaccine design, an army of dedicated scientists and researchers working around the clock, unprecedented financial resources from investors and countries enabling production to be ramped up in tandem with phase trials, and the bravery of hundreds of thousands of volunteers who were willing to roll up their sleeves to participate in the largest ever global trials to test for vaccine safety and efficacy. ‘Fast-tracked’ does not mean ‘rushed’.
It’s now been over 12 months since those first trial participants received their COVID vaccines.
And the question I like to ask is: ‘How much ‘long term’ data would suffice’?
Vaccine history teaches us that serious ‘long term’ adverse events almost always have an onset within eight weeks of receipt of the vaccine. The narrative that these vaccines are ‘rushed’ or that people will develop as-yet-unseen ‘long term’ adverse events, beyond those rare ones known occur within a month of vaccination, isn’t backed by fact or by vaccine precedent.
If only we could muster all the same resources to help address other concerning global issues. Imagine how much could be achieved.
- Sara
