Hopes for a return to normal life after the coronavirus hinge on the development of a vaccine. But experts say there’s no guarantee that a fully effective COVID-19 vaccine is possible. ManvBrain reports
A researcher working on developing a vaccine in Brazil. Photo: Douglas Magno/AFP/Getty Images Hopes for a return to normal life after the coronavirus hinge on the development of a vaccine. But there’s no guarantee, experts say, that a fully effective COVID-19 vaccine is possible.
Given the similarities of the diseases, their response to vaccination would likely be close to identical. So it’s troubling that when researchers conducted animal testing on prospective SARS vaccines, they ran into difficulty. The two versions that they tested both successfully triggered the host animal’s immune system to produce antibodies, but neither was very effective at protecting against the illness.
Even if researchers do develop a COVID-19 vaccine that’s effective at protecting animals, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will do the same for people. “One of the things that they say in science is that ‘mice lie, and monkeys don’t tell the truth,’” Roper says. “You can get something that works in mice, you can get something that works in monkeys, and it still might not work in humans.
Back during the SARS outbreak, researchers were unable to test their SARS vaccine candidates for effectiveness in humans. To do so, they would have had to inoculate a population that was exposed to SARS, and the disease was effectively wiped out using public-health measures before that could happen.
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