> I've heard an epidemiologist say that if a vaccine becomes available in 18 months it'll be a record.
Your epidemiologist should talk to a chemist or look at a wikipedia entry. In 1957, the H2N2 pandemic vaccine was available in 3 months. Still managed to kill a few million people.
I think you are nitpicking this doctor's words instead of listening to what he's saying. 18 years and no SARS vaccine. 18 months for SARS 2 would be miraculous.
He's an epidemiologist, and I think people aren't listening to what history is saying about the possibility of things. People accept 18 years or 18 months because they're trained to live in a sclerotic bureaucratic hellscape not because those are actual limitations involving long periods of time.
There was a thread last night about people worrying that improvised ventilators aren't FDA tested or whatever. That's a great thing to worry about in soft times. If I (or a member of my family) am facing death while waiting for a ventilator to save my life, I'll take my chances on the doodad cobbled together from a CPAP machine without FDA approval. Same story with vaccinations.