Development of mRNA vaccines against infectious disease is unprecedented in many ways. In a 2018 publication sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, vaccines were divided into three categories: Simple, Complex, and Unprecedented (Young et al., 2018). Simple and Complex vaccines represented standard and modified applications of existing vaccine technologies. Unprecedented represents a category of vaccine against a disease for which there has never before been a suitable vaccine. Vaccines against HIV and malaria are examples. As their analysis indicates, depicted in Figure 1, unprecedented vaccines are expected to take 12.5 years to develop. Even more ominously, they have a 5% estimated chance of making it through Phase II trials (assessing efficacy) and, of that 5%, a 40% chance of making it through Phase III trials (assessing population benefit). In other words, an unprecedented vaccine was predicted to have a 2% probability of success at the stage of a Phase III clinical trial. As the authors bluntly put it, there is a “low probability of success, especially for unprecedented vaccines.”
More scary details at the link. You can thank Vinnie Terranova for sending this story when you worry all weekend! Or you can thank the Lord He endowed you with the sense to flee this nightmare.
11:41 am on August 14, 2021 Email Becky Akers
