COVID Vaccine Timelines

It's very hard to speed up vaccine trials. You want to know whether the vaccine has adverse side effects that show up 6 months later. There is no way you can have that information 2 weeks from now. (Unless we have some Star-Trek-level technology for simulating the effect of vaccine on a human's metabolism faster than real time, which is clearly decades if not centuries away.)

no vaccine will be approved at the earliest 6 months from now. By then the worst will be over. Most vaccines take 1+ years

I read that most vaccines take 5-7 years to get approved. This one is less than a year. I worry that corners have been cut. Is that irrational?

It's happening way faster than normal for a vaccine, so... yes?

Nothing. Timelines for Covid-19 vaccine are already compressed. Even this data is just preliminary from Phase III.Limiting factor is safety and testing for safety.They started trials with two people, one gets vaccine one gets placebo. They look for side effects then add more and more people while constantly observing those vaccinated for side effects.Vaccines are not inherently safe, they are safe because they have gone trough huge amount of volunteer testing. If there are unwanted sid

Vaccine efficacy is not yet proven. Even if highly effective, vaccines will take years to circulate the world. Something like this, much easier to produce, supposedly, can fill that vaccine gap.

A vaccine has never been developed that quickly so I’m not sure you can say “surely”.

It was in the process of being approved.Yes, it was rushed. Sometimes rushing is appropriate. They still tested a lot.Getting covid can be extremely bad even if you survive, and most of the US caught it so far. The vaccine route is the safer route.

Couldnt we get a vaccine faster if they shared all research?

This isn't a failure. This is the quickest vaccine rollout ever. The way you do statistics for this means that the overkill speeds up how quickly you can verify effectiveness. For example, if you do a booster after 6 months, that adds 6 months to your study time. If you try to thread the needle to make the smallest possible vaccine, you need way more testing to prove it works. The approach taken is why we have 10% of the US vaccinated now instead of having a vaccine approved in 2 years.