Catholics and non-Catholics alike share the concern about the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccines.
As I’ve said a number of times, we as Catholics want to protect the precious gift of life. We also must respect science and seek truth.
The development would be too fast if they were cutting corners on safety, ethical standards, or good scientific practices. This is not the case for the vaccines that are now available.
There a number of great posts out there (linked at the end of this post) that explain how they developed these vaccines so rapidly, but I summarized them below.
- Though this coronavirus is new, coronaviruses aren’t new in general. Scientists weren’t starting from scratch, and they had a lot of prior knowledge about cornaviruses.
- There was a lot more collaboration and data sharing. This was particularly useful when the genetic sequence was made publicly available.
- More funding was provided. Because of the severity of the pandemic, it was easier to procure the large amounts of funding needed to keep development moving forward.
- There were a lot more volunteers to be trial participants making it easier to perform clinical trials.
- Researchers overlapped some phases of development. They still require the same standards, but they combined some aspects of their studies to save time.
- Early stages of the trials showed very promising results.
All that being said, they did not compromise the safety and they will continue collecting data.
For additional reading:
How COVID-19 vaccines were developed in record time, without compromising safety by Olivia Willis
‘A huge experiment’: How the world made so much progress on a Covid-19 vaccine so fast by Andrew Joseph
How did we develop a COVID-19 vaccine so quickly? by Jocelyn Solis-Moreira
Ten reasons we got Covid-19 vaccines so quickly without ‘cutting corners’ by Adam Finn
‘Four years’ work in one’: vaccine researchers are the unassuming heroes of Covid-19 by Xand van Tulleken
