[djsumdog]

The idea a vaccine can be safely made in less than a year is absolutely insanity. Many of these things shouldn't even be considered vaccines in the traditional sense.

Are there any vaccines out on the market today that are not one of the two: 1) inactivated virus, 2) attenuated virus (run through another host/egg or a related virus found in an animation that's less harmful to humans)?

Everything I've found indicates all our current viral vaccines are one of those two (excluding bacterial vaccines, which shouldn't be called vaccines either).

[cblconfederate]

The modeRNA vaccine is an mRNA vaccine, a completely new type of vaccine. While theoreticall less likely to have adverse effects, it did have adverse effects, and its efficacy remains a question. These are completely new types of vaccine, that presumably would need even more testing than the relatively well understood attenuated viruses.

[dehrmann]

> modeRNA

I can't believe I didn't notice that until now.

[linuxftw]

> completely new type of vaccine

Then is it a vaccine at all? Vaccines were traditionally live, dead, or attenuated virus/bacteria injections, some with adjutants, to stimulate an immune response.

Technologically speaking, it's bicycle vs airplane. Similar underlying purpose, entirely different implementation.

[LeoNatan25]

Both a bicycle and an airplane are transportation vehicles. Likewise, anything that illicits imunity is a vaccine, regardless of how novel the approach is.

[jessaustin]

Every time we see or hear an expert on the topic of COVID-19 vaccines, she/he is either circumspect to the point of pessimism (this is rare, but see e.g. Robert Gallo) or obviously trapped in a spiral of wishful thinking (this is common). We've never made anything like this hypothetical drug. Forget about election day. I'll be surprised if we have a commonly-available and effective COVID vaccine in 2021.

[ummonk]

Not the question you asked but the Chinese company Sinopharm has started phase 3 trials of a classic inactivated virus vaccine (and Bharat Biotech is starting phase 2 trials as well in India). The difficulty will be mass-producing it, of course, but we aren't necessarily reliant on novel vaccine technologies.