| We always knew this. Timelines for upstream discoveries are nothing more than hope until something proves out. It’s the downstream side of things that is predictable. But while a vaccine would be awfully nice, the key is to have workable treatments for those who need them. |
[ZeroHedge] With much of the world under some form of lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, and debates rage over when, and how, to reopen the global economy in order to avoid the next great depression, the light at the end of the tunnel has been top-down predictions of a vaccine within 18 months.
JPMorgan, for example, makes a core assumption that "it could take 12-16 months for a vaccine to be under mass production," and that the US will go through cycles of increased distancing measures followed by virus flare-ups, which require more lockdowns.
Yet after bold predictions and vaccines rumored to be 'just around the corner,' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease who sits on President Trump's coronavirus task force, offered a less enthusiastic view - saying in early March that a vaccine might be available in 12 - 18 months.
"The whole process is going to take a year, a year and a half, at least," said Fauci.
And while Fauci has been accused of fear mongering - relying on wildly-pessimistic models while advising President Trump on lockdown measures, he may have been wise to downplay the vaccine timeline.
According to a new report by Australia's ABC, the creation of a vaccine may be incredibly difficult for several reasons, as this particular coronavirus is 'posing challenges that scientists haven't dealt with before.'
According to Ian Frazer of the University of Queensland - who was involved in the creation of the HPV vaccine, coronaviruses are particularly difficult to create safe vaccines before because the virus infects the upper respiratory tract, which our immune system isn't particularly adept at protecting.
There are several reasons why our upper respiratory tract is a hard area to target a vaccine.
"It's a separate immune system, if you like, which isn't easily accessible by vaccine technology," Professor Frazer told the Health Report.
Despite your upper respiratory tract feeling very much like it's inside your body, it's effectively considered an external surface for the purposes of immunisation.
"It's a bit like trying to get a vaccine to kill a virus on the surface of your skin." -ABC News
In other words, because the upper respiratory tract is effectively "outside" of the body, and the outer layer of (epithelial) cells in the tract is our natural barrier to viruses, it's difficult to produce an immune response which can reach them.
Complicating matters is that if a vaccine causes an immune response that doesn't benefit the target cells, the result could potentially be worse than no vaccine at all. 
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