even in countries with established healthcare systems, storage at that ultra low temperature are not going to be widely available. That means vaccines concentrated in one or two location serving large communities from all over the country, slowing down the rollouts and implementation.
It’s not really a problem.
What will occur is transport will occur on dry ice. In proper containers, this can be maintained for several days. One defrosted vaccine is good for 5 days at normal fridge temperatures.
What’s needed is a decent logistics system. Imagine you handed it over to Amazon. With GPs having the ability to place orders as required. They could have next day delivery system, with complete tracking and limited wastage.
Looks like we are starting to get multiple treatments emerge. Hopefully at least one of them is good enough
The timing of this news (after, not before the Presidential elections) is the one conspiracy theory spouted by Trump I’m actually prepared to entertain. It appeals to me.
Aye, wasn’t trying to put Curevac’s (or other companies’) efforts down.
The more the merrier imo ( 
)
From what I understand there’s also possibility that different vaccines could potentially serve different purposes, as in better suited for different groups (eg. more/less side effects, young/old people, efficiency etc) ?
I can imagine many other scenarios, like a Cumming’s alogorithm. 
Would your imaginary scenario be valid, picking a country out of a hat, in let’s say Mauritanie?
Now you mention that … person, Cummings.
Apparently he’s had a spat with Chris Whitty and wants to reduce the self isolation period down to 10 days, using the fast track tests to push that process. 10 days was also a compromise as Whitty didn’t want to change from the current 14 days.
I honestly find him a disturbing individual, given what he’s doing and able to do as a so called advisor.
Allowing someone to have the power he evidently has yet without any responsibility to go with it is a recipe for disaster.
Trump managed that to a large degree in the USA (probably due to an in appropriate constitution). It appears some ‘democracies’ need to seriously revise their constitutions and laws in order for the ‘system’ to have real integrity.
Stunned to see a report on covid in the Texas prison system.
At one prison, 6% of the total population has died of covid. That is not 6% of all covid patients (though the two are not far off from one and the same), but of all prisoners.
So we suddenly have an ‘efficient’ vaccine which will be delivered before the end of the year, and of course, all out of the blue?.. 
This sounds more like SF to me, or more likely, an announcement designed to intentionally dope the financial markets.
I’ve read since several comments from serious doctors who don’t believe one word of this, and say that we shouldn’t expect a vaccine earlier than for the second half of 2021. That sounds much more realistic to me.
Urghh… 
I imagine its more a case that the Pfizer announcement has triggered this other announcement. The ‘race’ if there is in fact one will come down to each vaccine’s efficacy but no company wants to release a vaccine 2 months after their competitors and miss out on potential contracts.
Pfizer announcing days after the election could just be a coincidence.
If you look at what Pfizer is really saying, they are hoping to be in production in January, on the assumption that there are no safety issues, etc., etc. Absolute best case scenario. In practical terms, for general availability it will be months after that.
This announcement does not mean the vaccine is here. The results are only preliminary and so once the study is completed and all the regulatory stuff gets addressed we’re still looking at Christmas as an absolute best case of getting the first doses on the market. However, that will be only an exceedingly limited supply. No one has thought for probably 6 months that it would take until mid 2021 to get something on the market. The issue is it will take at least that long to manufacture enough doses of something that is approved at the turn of the year to get it in a decent number of people.
These results are also not unexpected, at least not in their timing. The success they are reporting is a surprise, but the nature of these projects means we have all been waiting on the announcement of these preliminary results and expect similar sorts of reports from the other major trials before the end of the year as well.
US prisons, at least of higher security, are hellholes and more akin to concentration camps (no, not talking about death camps here obviously, and yes, I am exaggerating a bit, though not that much) though. None of these places should exist in an advanced non-totalitarian state according to my set of ethics at least. I am not surprised that this happens there. I assume the same is happening elsewhere in poorer less advanced countries with similar hellscape prisons.
What is in some ways even more jarring is that Texas prison staff are also dying at an alarming rate. Michigan and Ohio both have shocking rates as well, but those have come down as the pandemic has progressed, where the rate in Texas has not.
I bet the Corona deniers won’t want it.
Better tell them that vaccines are dangerous just to make sure. 