This Conversation forum has numerous other scholarly articles on covid, all free, and all written by individuals who know their stuff, usually due to professional experience in medical research on covid, human immunology or other aspects of public health. Although the articles are written by experts, the articles are all summary reports prepared for a non-academic audience.
As to the length of time that the vaccines took to develop, there is an important detail to how development proceeded. The speed of development was unprecedented primarily because due to the emergency need, a huge amount of money was spent so many testing and approval processes were done simultaneously rather than in sequence. Normally, each stage of development of a new vaccine is completed and reviewed prior to starting the next stage. Stuff that can be checked early is checked early before spending money on stuff that can be checked later. This is done under normal circumstances to save money - it would be a waste to do everything simultaneously only to find that testing/approval failed on one of the processes ordinarily done early. In response to the covid emergency, governments shovelled large amounts of money into the development process to permit multiple portions of the testing, review, and approval process to be done simultaneously even though this meant significant financial risk if testing or approval failed due to something normally tested early. Also given the emergency, normal turn around for agency review was, I'll bet, speeded up by having all hands on deck rather than simply fitting tasks into the normal sorting of work priorities. Bottom line is that the testing and approval process was not abbreviated by weakening it, it was accelerated by doing the same stuff in parallel processes as efficiently as possible rather than in sequence and at leisure.
The last thing I will contribute to this discussion is that a decision whether to get vaccinated or comply with other public health measures is not just about the individual making the decision, it is about all the other people who might be put at risk. More infected people and serious infections present in a community means higher risk of infection for everyone, and higher load on our health care system. It is not just the elderly at risk, covid has killed many thousands of younger and middle aged persons. Many individuals have medical conditions which render them vulnerable to serious disease from covid, and not all of these vulnerable individuals are old. Further, our health care facilities were brought to the brink of failure in many communities due to overload due to covid, and the system has still not recovered from this.
So, gro peeps, maybe scratch the noggin a bit more when decision time comes up. The life you save may be your own, or that of a friend or loved one.
..when you trying it....?
..Much Appreciated.....
