VACCINE development is on overdrive. In the dangerous hurry is a lot of hype about what a panacea the vaccines are made out to be.
Pfizer, a German biotech, and AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish drug company, recently released data saying their vaccines are stimulating strong immune responses with minor side effects. They need to be more forthcoming.
Lives are at stake here. Covid-19 vaccine development brings with it two issues. One is the speed at which the vaccines are being processed from lab to needle.
Two is the side effects of the vaccines. First, the speed. On May 21, AstraZeneca, which is working with Oxford University to develop the Covid-19 vaccine, told BBC that it was ready to supply the doses in September.
Even if the vaccines are out by the end of the year, it is still at warp speed, as the White House calls it. Let's not forget, it was only last November that the Covid-19 outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China.
Is a year enough when we know so little about the coronavirus that causes Covid-19? If we take all the vaccines that were developed in the past and averaged the time taken to produce them, it will turn out to be somewhere between two and 10 years.
The closer the vaccine is to the higher end of the spectrum, the better is its efficacy, we learn. Even then, there is many a slip between the lab and the arm. History of vaccine development tells us that nine out of 10 vaccines fail in trials.
To skip or shorten a step in the very long vaccine development process is to exchange safety for speed. No government should want this, even if it makes commercial sense.
We know from experience that not all commerce is safe. Second, are the "minor" side effects. Let's not forget that one man's "minor" side effect can be another's "major" one. It will be good if the vaccine developers tell it all.
Is commerce the enemy? Or geopolitics? It is a mixture of both. There is a lot of grey in the life of a nation and a man. Let's take commerce first.
Given the scale of the global infection and the lethal nature of Covid-19, vaccines are a multi-billion dollar business. Just take one vaccine, the AZD 1222 of AstraZeneca.
If BBC is right, the company is planning to push out one billion doses by the end of the year or early next year. Taking one estimate of one dose to be US$20 (as some estimate), that's a whopping US$20 billion. And this is only one dose. Experts are telling us we may end up needing a second dose as a booster.
Assuming this to be so, and the 7.8 billion of the world to be vaccine-ready, the drug companies are looking at a US$312 billion business. Sadly, not all the 7.8 billion are going to be inoculated.
Geopolitics of the pandemic will make sure of this. The United States is already signing exclusive deals with multiple drug and biotech companies around the world, including American ones.
Britain, too, is on a vaccine-booking spree. The poor will, as in many things else, be left out to fend for themselves. Commerce is often cruel. The cash register never cares. But geopolitics is worse. And when the two get together, a disaster may be in the making.