But he is the CEO or a large drug company! Someone beats them to a vaccine and they stand to lose huge profits. Hyperbole such as 'governments are doing the people a grave disservice' are of course silly. There's no disservice if a vaccine isn't developed... because no one has 'lost' anything. It's not like the vaccine is being taken away.
Looking at past results is potentially not as helpful here. It's been a long time since we've had such a world-wide pandemic. And one that can't be caught by a change in habits (for example HIV could be reduced with condoms). Covid is not like that. And there are huge profits to be made, so the incentive is there. Perhaps more than ever before.
He makes good, factual points... I understand the potential bias given his position. But that does not detract from simple factual statements made by him .
If you want to look at the progress for a vaccine - lets look at the independent groups PUBLICLY monitoring that progress. Example: WHO (who said today , there may never be a vaccine),
Sobering vaccine warning from WHO
JAMA (link in post above, caution against rolling out any vaccine too soon and without rigorous testing ) ... or the London school of medicine who is tracking all 226 projects around the world to develop a vaccine. WHO also tracks this progress, but they are usually a few weeks behind the London school of medicine.
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine :
COVID-19
WHO :
Draft landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines
tl;dr: The bottom line is this - globally there are now 28 of those 226 teams that are up to "human trials".. which goes through stages ( pre-clinical, phase1,phase2, phase3 ) Of those 28 already 6 are up to Phase 3 human trials... By the very definition of phase3, that must take many months (usually years) . The most advanced team is Oxford/Astrazeneca and ( if all goes well ) they will finish their Phase3 trial in Sept 2021. One of the chinese teams (Sinovac) is about one month behind that.... That means - if all testing, verification etc are actually done AND no problems AND everything amazingly works as expected in terms of efficacy etc
the first of the vaccine candidates can only be ready in the last couple months of 2021 at the earliest.
The Merck guy makes the factual point - that many vaccines candidates FAIL in the final stages. That is just a fact. But even putting that to one side - assuming the Oxford team gets there - we are realistically looking at 2022 before availability... AND THAT IS THE EARLIEST...
If you disagree - please explain the circumstances that could possibly make it earlier - and which of the vaccine candidates can possibly overtake the leading team... BTW I like the UQ team in Brisbane (but unlikely they will be "first" ) . They are one of the 28 in human trials... and according to reported progress are coming 19th at the moment.