[justaguyhere]

therefore I’m moving for a year or so until things fully reopen

Do you see an end to this pandemic in the next year or so? A good percentage of people are still refusing to wear masks, we aren't anywhere closer to a vaccine etc. I am trying to be optimistic, but the situation isn't improving from any direction and we are already 10 months in :(

[burlesona]

It's a fair question, and for me the answer is open-ended. I expect this to last at least another year, but I really have no idea when things will feel "normal" and "safe" again.

[pgwhalen]

In what sense are we not closer to a vaccine? I’m not following vaccine development closely, but my understanding is that many candidates are progressing along nicely.

[bitbckt]

Just today, for example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/13/covid-vacci...

[save_ferris]

It's important to point out that while these trials appear promising, there has never been a vaccine developed for any coronavirus before that eradicated the illness in humans[0]. Influenza vaccines, for example, work to fortify the immune system from various strains of influenza, but they do not prevent illness. There's a lot of political and commercial pressure to make this happen, but the reality is that this is an incredibly hard problem to solve and we may be dealing with COVID-19 in some form for the foreseeable future.

0: https://www.uchealth.org/today/coronavirus-vaccines-101-what...

[throwaway1777]

Covid has already got to the point where it's more likely that you'll die in a car accident than of covid... so I think with something like the flu vaccine is probably good enough.

[kelnos]

Motor vehicle deaths per year in the US are under 40,000. In less than ten months, more than 210,000 people in the US have died of COVID. You're an order of magnitude off.

[graeme]

That’s extremely routine procedure for any trial. When there’s an u explained illness the trial is halted to investigate if it is linked to the vaccine or not.

If it isn’t, the trial resumes.

[bitbckt]

No question there.

I wasn’t speaking to the GP’s question about progress but to their “not following the news” comment.

I apparently should have made that clear.

[refurb]

I don't think the downvotes here are fair. Drug development is hard. Most candidates never make it to market. This is a vaccine for a virus that's never been successfully vaccinated against.

Expect a majority of the vaccines in trial to fail over the next 6 months, either for safety or efficacy.

[NeutralCrane]

> This is a vaccine for a virus that's never been successfully vaccinated against.

For lack of economic need. Most coronaviruses only cause mild symptoms, so there's not been a need for one. SARS vaccine efforts died early because the disease itself died out and there was no impetus to continue searching. MERS is similar in that, even though it hasn't gone away, it burns itself out so quickly that the need for a vaccine is relatively small, and therefore research efforts have been limited.

> Drug development is hard. Most candidates never make it to market.

For vaccines, something like 80+% that make it past Phase 2 end up making it past Phase 3. Its unlikely for most vaccines that make it that far to fail. We already have half a dozen candidates around the world at that point, with more on the way. If anything, its highly unlikely we won't find some kind of vaccine. If not one that grants sterilizing immunity, one that provides enough protection that it makes the disease far less deadly, like the flu vaccine.

[refurb]

For lack of economic need.

Exactly, and because of lack of economic need our experience with creating vaccines against coronaviruses is pretty minimal.

And yes, I agree that we'll get something, but people should be prepared for a few of the vaccines to fail, a few to be pretty mediocre (are they worth even getting) and a few that actually have some utility. The challenge is the ones in development are strung out along a pretty long timeline, so if we're lucky, one of the earliest ones works and we don't have to wait until late 2021 for something worthwhile.

And not only that, but people should expect something promising to be approved and then likely pulled off the market 6-9 months post-approval. It's just the nature of trying to accelerate a vaccine and then once approved, dosing tens of millions of people with it.

[justchilly]

Wearing masks won't make this end any sooner. Reducing transmission rates flattens the curve meaning smaller spikes but likely longer presence of corona virus.

[throwmeaway_pls]

Unfortunately when rationality and ideology conflict, ideology tends to win.