[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.