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by adtechperson 2117 days ago
Some of the leading vaccines present their own logistical challenges. Some of the leading vaccines (Moderna, Pfizer) are quite fragile and are hard to transport and store. Moderna needs to be shipped and stored at -20C (-4F) this is tricky but not that hard, since it is in the range of commercial freezers. The Pfizer vaccine needs to be shipped and stored at -70C (-94F) which is outside the range of ordinary freezers (bio labs have them but doctors labs do not). Pfizer can be packed in dry ice to ship, but the ice needs to be replenished every 24 hours. https://twitter.com/LizSzabo/status/1298646754884300800
1 comments

How does that compare to, say, flu vaccines? If these are hitherto unsolved problems at scale I’d be worried that a rush to deploy them will lead to no small number of failed vaccinations.
Flu vaccines are stable in household refrigerators. At the hospital I worked at, we stored roughly 10,000 doses in a 38°F fridge that wasn’t even on a dedicated backup. The benefits of decades of research...

*Edited to show F instead of a unitless 38º

38 degrees is the opposite of refridgeration, crazy!
That's probably 38 degrees Fahrenheit (~3 degrees Celsius).
Fahrenheit, which is ~3 degrees Celsius.