Safety last, profit first:
The Food and Drug Administration said this week that vaccine developers would not need to conduct lengthy randomized controlled trials for vaccines that have been adapted to protect against concerning coronavirus variants. From a report: The recommendations, which call for small trials more like...
science.slashdot.org
First series of "vaccines" were untested, so I wonder what now means not to have a lengthy testing.
"untested" may be an exaggeration, but yes, they went into massive use without knowing if they prevented contagion, long term effects, etc.
Yet deaths seem to be sinking in elderly residences as vaccination goes up, so that's good.
I don't understand medicine, but the clinical trials by the manufacturers themselves were scheduled for 2 years.
I know there's a lot of clever people doing their best and collaborating as much as they can, but still I'm afraid of the rest of the people who knows nothing but takes so much blind faith in vaccines that won't require any evidence whatsoever. A couple of months of clinical test were already little. If you add greedy managers and
responsibility waiving contracts, I'm not all that relaxed to hear they shorten any tests.
I don't know how long tests should be, but I very much fear this is not going to be stopped by vaccines. At least in the EU vaccine supply is not at all sufficient (let alone development of new vaccines). If we're not vaccinating people fast enough it's obvious we won't be able to stop the new variants with new vaccines. The virus seems perfectly able to mutate faster than we are able to vaccinate people (even if we magically had perfect vaccines the next day a new variant appears we'd lose).
It would be wiser to spend more time testing vaccines, and once tested make sure supply and application is faster.
But the way to stop the virus and its mutations is lockdowns (and masks, handwashing, social distance...), not vaccines.
People want to rush untested vaccines to avoid lockdowns, to forget personally about restrictions once they are vaccinated for one variant, and to give away health data to private companies (
COVID passports,
health records given to pharma or
almost) without waiting to think whether there's any reason that will stop the pandemic.
In Galiza they just passed a law to fine people who refuse to be vaccinated when offered. Why?
Astrazeneca just said (and denied) it could supply half of the promised doses in Q2 2021.
Can't they just offer the dose to some other Galician when one refuses ? They won't vaccinate them all anyway, not before the virus changes and they have to start over.
Edit: Sorry if I was EU-centric. Of course if the vaccination doesn't reach the whole world, the mutations will keep coming back to invalidate the vaccines, so no point in rushing new vaccines for the rich if you don't figure out how to vaccinate the world.