Big cuts coming

Quote: Gotcha "Because of what you rightly put in the first place. We have been here before. How many years ago was Sars? we still have no vaccine. They can say whatever they want, until something is tangible it doesn't mean it is happening, and like I said would be amazed if it was different this time.'"

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.