On the other hand, the coronavirus is highly politised and pharmaceutical companies have a financial incentive to be the first to release a vaccine to the market. I fear that those who document the vaccines' side-effects during testing phases are biased in vaccines' favour. I also tend to be paranoid.
Study design is set up so bias is removed as much as possible. (F.e.: Double blind.) If you have no political intervention, you should be good. (If you temper with large scale study results, it should show in the data.)
Also - public fallback. So while yes, multiple companies are racing to be first - it would be mostly for reputational gains. We brought down profits in vaccine development so much, that especially their production is highly centralized, and you are dealing with maybe 5 international large scale producers of vaccines, whose money lies in mass production.
So whoever develops a viable candidate, actually would profit most from reputational gains, not from 'make money quick' schemes to follow. (Need to elaborate, for this to make sense.
Whoever will become a candidate that gets mass produced, will get 'get rich money' quick, but you will not necessarily have 'schemes', because you cant get over the threashhold of producing vaccines en mass as a smaller company. Large players in the field have an incentive not to want to get kicked out of business by reputational costs of a failed vaccine, so they also are interested in having everything go above board. Or they are done in the business. So 'go scramble' culture ends after vaccine development.) Which means, if after phase 3 testing you have high rates of side effects - whatever you gained from 'being first' goes bye bye. Also phase 3 testing is set up to get an idea about edit: effectiveness at large scale. Also, testing should be independent, again, following test design thats there to eliminate passive, or active biases.
Vaccines will _not_ be made mandatory (at least at first), because you are dealing with a new 'target audience' thats not used to getting vaccinated after childhood, and doing so would result in lower compliance.
Highest risk imho are political pressures to release too early (as we've seen with the russian vaccine and countries who ordered those shots early). See f.e.:
https://www.dw.com/en/philippines-p...vaccine-clinical-trials-in-october/a-54548273 (That said:
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-vaccine-sputnik-coronavirus/a-54819322 )
edit: Here is how most (state) contracts are set up:
The terms of APAs (Advance Vaccine Purchase Agreements) vary from deal to deal. In many cases, the payments to vaccine companies are contingent on the success of their vaccine, as is the case in most of the recent government deals to procure coronavirus vaccines. There are also instances when the investments are not subject to the clinical success of the vaccine, so if a vaccine does not get regulatory approval, both the sponsor and the drugmaker lose money.
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-vaccine-nationalism-covid-19-us-germany-gavi/a-54634662
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Phases of vaccine development (normally):
Translation:
2-5 years: Research. Analyzing the virus, understanding what causes the immune reaction.
2-5 years: Pre clinical development. Design of the vaccine: Which components. Animal trials: Side effects, effectiveness.
3-7 years: Clinical trials
Phase 1: What effects does it produce in people. 10-30 volunteers needed in testing
Phase 2: Dosage testing. 50-500 volunteers needed in testing
Phase 3: Effectiveness testing: >1000 volunteers needed in testing
1-2 years: Approval by national health agencies
several years: Production: - building facilities, trial operation, mass production, packaging, transport
several years: Vaccination campaigns: Ideally world wide
source: vfa (trade association):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verband_Forschender_Arzneimittelhersteller
edit: On double blind testing vaccines:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157320/
