This is something that we’ve been conditioned to believe in: the COVID-19 pandemic will be officially over once a vaccine is found.
It’s an endgame that even the Avengers would’ve believed in, and if so, that means we can only breathe easy, both figuratively and literally, when a company finally comes in to announce, “A vaccine is available!”
Unfortunately, reality usually isn’t kind.
Firstly, there’s no guarantee that a vaccine can be found in the first place. In fact, developing a safe and working vaccine is a tall order: historically speaking, finding a vaccine for any virus isn’t often the endgame for most viruses. And secondly, finding a vaccine within two years or so is akin to seeing a pig fly: it’s never happened before.
Reader Bao: But we got the H1N1 vaccine fastly.
The H1N1 pandemic did indeed start from January 2009 and the vaccine was ready by the end of the year, but that’s different: to put it in Goody-Feed-style, the vaccine was actually kind of already available as it’s a flu; all it takes is a modification of the flu vaccine and ta-da: you’ve the vaccine ready.
The key words to note in COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, are novel and corona.
Novel means no one has got it before, so none of us were immune to it when it first struck us.
And coronavirus is basically a group of related RNA viruses, and there are actually many of them: common ones like HCoV-OC43 or HCoV-HKU1 cause the common cold, SARS-CoV causes Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), MERS-CoV causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and of course, SARS-CoV-2 causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
And here’s the thing: so far, there has been no vaccines developed to stop any coronavirus.
Yet.
The only reason why we stay optimistic for a vaccine for COVID-19 despite history proving otherwise is that it’s unprecedented; unlike other coronaviruses, this has caused massive disruptions in society, what with the lockdowns and the temporary closure of McDonald’s outlets in Singapore.
In other words, it’s a matter of resources lah: you put in more resources, you should be able to achieve the impossible.
But even that’s not going to create a miracle.
World-renowned virus-hunter, Prof Peter Piot from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has mentioned that a vaccine isn’t going to be a silver bullet. He said, “When you hear some politicians or public health figures say, okay, we need to do all this and next year we’ll have a vaccine, and we’ll go back to normal. I think, forget it, a vaccine is not going to be a silver bullet.”
Yesterday, another expert chimed in.
French Expert: Full COVID-19 Vaccine Unlikely to be Ready by 2021
Epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet, the head of the Emerging Diseases Epidemiology Unit from Pasteur Institute in France, has taken to the media to warn us about what we knew but refused to accept.
He said, “A vaccine is several years in development…Of course, there is an unprecedented effort to develop a vaccine, but I would be very surprised if we had that was effective in 2021.”
Yes, it sounds pretty familiar.
There might be one that would work partially but not fully.
The only best solution?
People to take social distancing more seriously, because the easy solution that’ll have other consequences would be yet another lockdown.
The goal is to live with the virus by building social-distancing habits.
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Lest you didn’t know, France is one of the worst-hit countries in the world—it now has over 171K confirmed cases and just over 30k deaths.
Regardless of whether the word “unprecedented” could’ve created a miracle, you might be calling us “fake news” because you’re read countless articles about the progress of a vaccine. Or ten vaccines.
Of course, those articles are real, but it’s time to get a tad more critical about the things you read.
Reader Bao: Why do I feel like reading Goody Feed makes me feel pess—
Company Executive Sell Shares After Making Announcement
Since you’ve been reading lots of articles about vaccines, then you should know about this: results of findings from companies would usually generate lots of publicity, and that in turn increased the stock price of the company.
Would those early results eventually translate to a working vaccine?
That’s for Year 2021 to find out, but in Year 2020, it’s alleged that some executives in the company sell their shares when the stock price increases, making a tidy profit.
Reader Bao: They’d make even more if they keep the stock when the vaccine is developed.
You’re still very naïve, Mr Bao. But anyways;
It got so bad that an anti-corruption watchdog group had to step in to urge the authorities to investigate because it “exploited widespread fears surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”
The company defended its employee by saying that the sale of the stocks was under “preplanned 10b5-1 plans”. Basically, it means the executives cannot sell stocks based on insider information, and they can only sell them at a pre-determined time.
Reader Bao: But like that they can time—
So no crime is committed, and the announcement is based upon facts and not hearsay, so needless to say, nothing could be done.
Except that we might really think that a vaccine would be ready soon.
So be more critical in what you read. For example, reading Goody Feed is supposed to make you a tad smarter through entertainment, and not for you to think about what you’ve read in the last few months.
Reader Bao: I’m now doubting if Nigel Armstrong really landed on the moon.
