I get it that you have read, as have I, that experts are saying 12-18 months. I get it that with the current FDA approval process that less than 12-18 months is probably not all that realistic. What I am not in agreement with is that there is nothing that can be done in less than 12-18 months.
I appreciate that you have worked in pharma and as such you know how this stuff works. I concede that as the FDA system is currently set the process takes 12-18 months for a drug to come to market.
However, what I do not concede is that this is the only way or even that this is the best way moving forward.
Lets think about this thing in a logical way......
Lets ask some basic questions and see if we can come to agreement on them:
1) Do we all agree that we can not continue in "Lockdown mode" indefinitely?
my comment - I sure hope we can all agree that this is not possible
2) How long can we survive in "Lockdown mode?"
my comment - This is a biggie - If you believe we can stay in lockdown mode for 12-18 months then we are good. Lets just let the researchers do their thing and lets just let the FDA keep their current timetable with their current approval criteria. If, on the other hand, you believe that the answer to my question is something less than 12 months then we either have to change the approval process or accept the outcome of no Vaccine for 12-18 months.
I personally do not not believe that governments will be able to keep control of things for anything close to 12 months in "Lockdown mode" I believe that there will be regime shift & loss of government control & social disorder/chaos much sooner than 12 months. As evidence I did a google search of "how many americans live paycheck to paycheck" I spent no more energy on than to look at the top one that came up. The article was written Jan 11, 2020 & here is a link: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-...eck-2020-01-07 There is obviously going to be a variety ways of how you ask the question & such, but if you read the article you will see that it can be quoted that "nearly 3 in 10 adults have no emergency savings at all."
Given the above evidence and you come to the same conclusion that I did which is that "Lockdown mode" is not possible for more than 12 months then we must either do something about it or live with the consequences.
Look, we need to come up with an acceptable solution to this thing. I get it that there are smart people working on it and all that. I also get it that the current FDA approval process takes a long time. I also get it that we don't want to Vaccinate a population and create a problem that is worse than if we do nothing at all, however, it is all about trade offs.
I don't know exactly what the FDA considers when they approve or decline a drug, but I can assure you that they do approve drugs that have risks and that do not always work. There is no such drug that works 100% of the time with no side affects. It just doesn't work that way. There is some point that they just say "this is good enough, we approve." Why do they not wait for perfection? Well, if they did they might never get anything approved. Lets say a disease will kill 50% of those infected and a drug cures 99% of those. Is that acceptable? or do we just say "let 50% die." If your criteria is that it has to cure 100% of the people you would have to not approve the drug, right? When you put it like that the answer seems obvious? You approve the drug and save 99% if you are the FDA. Again, I mentioned trade offs earlier and this is an example of this. At some point we are willing to accept the side affects and the % of people that the drug does not work on in order to save those that it does work on.
Right now we, as the world, have accepted that going into "lockdown mode" is better than the alternative. This is another example what I am talking about with trade offs. We are currently putting the world into "Lockdown mode" and the world has deemed that the positives of doing that outweigh the negatives. Not only has the world deemed that the positives outweigh the negatives but ALSO that the worlds population has accepted this and is currently willing to go along with this. I believe that people will not accept this and that it isn't going to be anywhere close to 12 months before we have a massive problem & it will start with the 30%, or what ever, that don't have any emergency savings.
I am not the expert, but I have thought about this a lot and I think that there has to be a better way. Letting the world fall into Chaos and having regime shift/ governments fail etc is not an acceptable solution for me. Maybe there is another way, but if you are telling me the only solution is a vaccine and you are also telling me that this is not possible in less than 12 months then I believe we have to either reduce that time or come up with something else because holding on to hope for a vaccine in 12 months and keeping status quo for that length of time just isn't going to cut it
Last edited:
