Even finding a covid-19 vaccine won't be enough to end the pandemic (WaPo)

[SoonerPride]

If coronavirus persists, the volume of vaccine available in coming years is expected to fall far short of global demand

Johnson & Johnson’s race to manufacture a billion doses of coronavirus vaccine is ramping up in a small biotechnology plant near Interstate 95 in Baltimore. But even as technicians prepare to lower 1,000-liter plastic bags of ingredients into steel tanks for brewing the first batches of experimental vaccine, international concern is bubbling about what countries will get the first inoculations.


The Baltimore plant is the second of four planned locations around the world where Johnson & Johnson plans to pump out vaccine on a massive scale, months before testing the first dose in a human being. The manufacturing head start is one part of a worldwide scramble to protect the human population from the virus, which is not expected to vanish on its own.


If SARS-CoV-2 establishes itself as a stubborn, endemic virus akin to influenza, medical experts say, there almost certainly will not be enough vaccine for at least several years, even with the unprecedented effort to manufacture billions of doses. About 70 percent of the world’s population — or 5.6 billion people — will probably need to be inoculated to begin to establish herd immunity and slow its spread, scientists say.


Yet the nationalistic priorities of individual nations could thwart the strategic imperative to tamp down hot spots wherever they are on the planet — including poor countries that cannot afford the vaccine. The United States in particular could be left in the cold if vaccines developed here as part of a go-it-alone approach turn out to be less effective than those produced in China or Europe.

More here
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/11/coronavirus-vaccine-global-supply/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. With governments still playing God, deciding who will live (vaccine) or die (no vaccine).

And it hasn't been established whether this vaccine is lifetime or whether it would have to be administered every year, and modified to the mutation(s) of the Virus.

[live love laugh]

2. MORE Americans may have to die due to Republican go-it-alone stupidity. nt

[uponit7771]

3. Random 2% 1 hr total test time test with 15 min turn around would be cheaper and more effective now

[Worried2020]

4. Of course it won't - we have to test it, figure out how to manufacture it

and distribute it.

Problem is, in search of better profits, our companies have outsourced the supply of many of our needs to other countries.

I'm not certain we are even self-sufficient anymore.

I'm seeing shortages already . . .

scary.

W