[frenchy]

> The scientists told us that a vaccine wouldn't be ready for years, it was actually ready in months

I remember the messaging at the beginning of last year being to expect at least 18 months, possibly much longer. For most people, 18 months will be about accurate, for a few people, they will have beat the estimate, but that's not surprising - it's an estimate. It's a hell of a lot more accurate than a couple months.

> these institutions are powerful and need to save face

You just explained above that these institutions are not powerful, and that they have limititations. Which one of these are true?

[Animats]

Messenger RNA vaccines, which are a new technology, turned out to work much better than expected. They can be synthesized fast. It took two days to make the first mRNA vaccine molecules for coronavirus. Traditional vaccine technology is slower. Bulk production was a problem; encapsulating those fragile mRNA molecules without breaking them requires a difficult bit of microfluidics technology. But it's difficult in the sense that IC manufacturing is difficult. Once the manufacturers got the tooling and the process right, it worked well.

Here's the list of vaccines under development.[1] There are 105 different vaccines in the pipeline. Most of those are more traditional approaches and don't work yet, need further testing, don't work as well, or have other problems. What we have now is the minimum viable product - two doses, difficult handling and distribution, requires an injection. Some of the ones in the pipeline are skin patches, nasal sprays, or pills. The Merck pill, though, turned out to be a dud - provides only weak protection.

The non-injection schemes may help overcome some of the vaccine resistance problems.

Throwing money at the problem did help. Usually, vaccine R&D consists of finding the most likely candidate, setting up the Phase I/II/III trials, and waiting to see how it works. If it doesn't work, the developers go on to another candidate. Developing 100 different vaccines in parallel improved the odds. A lot.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...

[nickysielicki]

> I remember the messaging at the beginning of last year being to expect at least 18 months, possibly much longer.

I remember messaging about timelines of several years. The fact that science eventually arrived at a consistent and accurate message doesn't mean that there wasn't consensus around the wrong opinions when it was most critical.

> You just explained above that these institutions are not powerful, and that they have limititations. Which one of these are true?

Nowhere did I claim they are not powerful, I simply claimed that they made bad decisions.