Leeds having to make big cuts across the board to try to stay afloat . Could this be 1990s revisited?

Whole game has got to be on a knife edge already. Even localised lockdowns after the restart will utterly kill some clubs I'd imagine.

It's awful. Just an awful, horrible place everybody is in at the moment. I'm lucky, my job is safe but it's changed - I can't do any of the interesting bits because that involves travel and meeting people. That should come back and I am very thankful, no furlough, no pay cut.

This was coming though - there was warning after warning, lucky escape after lucky escape. We are now looking at radical changes to the development and validation processes for vaccines, we can't sit around for 10 years anymore. Thank Christ this is not like MERS which has a fatality rate of over 30%, or even Ebola. But it could be next time.

Hopefully vaccine by Autumn if all goes well.

Whilst agree with everything you say here, I will be amazed if we ever have a vaccine, never mind within the next year. And you are right warning after warning, but not sure they still will have learned.

Quote: Gotcha "Whilst agree with everything you say here, I will be amazed if we ever have a vaccine, never mind within the next year. And you are right warning after warning, but not sure they still will have learned.'" I am wondering why you think there won't be a vaccine? There are half a dozen vaccines in advanced development and one that is undergoing efficacy studies right now in UK, Brazil and South Africa (that's phase 3 prior to launch). It's set to commence a very large scale study in the US in August - 30,000 participants. The vaccine is being bulk manufactured now by AstraZeneca. The first 20 minutes or so of this tells you where we are at the moment. https://youtu.be/o_6cM2EvXaI

Quote: Gotcha "Whilst agree with everything you say here, I will be amazed if we ever have a vaccine, never mind within the next year. And you are right warning after warning, but not sure they still will have learned.'" I am wondering why you think there won't be a vaccine? There are half a dozen vaccines in advanced development and one that is undergoing efficacy studies right now in UK, Brazil and South Africa (that's phase 3 prior to launch). It's set to commence a very large scale study in the US in August - 30,000 participants. The vaccine is being bulk manufactured now by AstraZeneca. The first 20 minutes or so of this tells you where we are at the moment. https://youtu.be/o_6cM2EvXaI

Normally it takes 3 years for a vaccine to hit the market, not sure I would be willing to use one that's been pushed through in months. Who knows what the long term effects are!

You need to study history in a little more detail. Anthony Fauci was asked this exact question during one televised briefing. I'll paraphrase: There is no Sars vaccine because we don't need one. Several were developed but by the time they were going to pass through regulatory approval the virus had disappeared. Nobody has been working on a Sars vaccine for well over a decade. Sars Cov-1 displayed different pathology to Covid 19. It presented severe symptoms very quickly - 2-3 days - so track and trace of immediate contacts was highly effective. That's why it was easier to control and eradicate. Also, well worth remembering that the disease never reached the West and was never declared a pandemic.

Covid 19 is actually pretty straightforward as a virus, 4 proteins all showing none or very slow mutation. The proteins are relatively easy to clone and produce. The Oxford vaccine uses a tried and tested vector - a simian virus with the Covid 19 spike protein added (and to answer LeedsLurch) this has been used safely for other vaccines. Monitoring of the immune response to the vaccine is what we supply tools to do - we already do it for pneumonia vaccines. I work on this stuff and I'll be happy to be first in line for a jab - especially at my age. There will also be more than one vaccine in the next 12 months and beyond. Covid 19 is not going away. Even a strong protective response from a vaccine is only predicted to last a few short years, natural immunity form having the disease is predicted to last only months (how many we don't know yet).

The timelines have been shortened for one simple reason - the economic impact of a global pandemic. We (and I say "we" because myself and my company are heavily involved) have seen unprecedented co-operation between researchers, regulators and big pharma. Nobody wants to be seen to be "obstructive" when so many lives are being lost. When you have so much resource available and you combine that with a team at Oxford who were already a long way towards the goal because of the work being done with their MERS vaccine, things can happen quickly.
This is how we are going to have to do things in the future because this is not the last global pandemic we will see. China and other underdeveloped countries need to rethink their entire social attitude towards animal husbandry because global travel being the way it is it is going to happen again and again.

It did happen. Sorry, that's just a fact. Vaccines had already been developed when the virus disappeared in 2005.

By the way, I have no issue with skepticism. "I'll believe it when I see it" is practically the (good) scientists mantra. But evidence has to be legitimate for a negative as well as a positive opinion. I have seen enough evidence to be confident (not 100% sure) that we will have a vaccine, if not this year then early in 2021 and I have seen no evidence to suggest that this virus is uniquely difficult in terms of developing a vaccine against.

Mine too.

Great insight Mr Tache. Thanks