The vaccine design and production rollout is an impressive feat by the Trump administration and Big Pharma. From a purely professional standpoint, I'm in awe; I've had minor running changes on trivial automotive components take longer than this entire rollout.
The testing is another story altogether. Sorry, but sticking ~50k healthy people with this completely new type of drug, observing for side effects in only the shortest of terms, and then calling it all-good does not strike me as good science or engineering.
There are also some serious ethical conversations we're not having, particularly around vaccinating the elderly. If doses are scarce and test data is limited, should we be sticking frail elderly with this stuff? Or is that where it has the most benefit due to the low mortality rate among younger (<55) people?
The testing is another story altogether. Sorry, but sticking ~50k healthy people with this completely new type of drug, observing for side effects in only the shortest of terms, and then calling it all-good does not strike me as good science or engineering.
There are also some serious ethical conversations we're not having, particularly around vaccinating the elderly. If doses are scarce and test data is limited, should we be sticking frail elderly with this stuff? Or is that where it has the most benefit due to the low mortality rate among younger (<55) people?