I decided to make this post because I have had a lot of friends ask me the same questions. This is going to be long so grab a drink and settle in.

Isn’t this too fast?

This seems to be the biggest deterrent for many people when considering whether or not they trust the COVID-19 Vaccine. I am going to answer this question.

How long does it take for a MODERN vaccine to be developed? 

Don’t google and come back with the article saying 10 years because average does not exclude old outdated technology. Comparing old vaccine methodologies is like saying ‘I don’t trust cars because they can build them in days now as opposed to years by hand’. Technology changes. Remember how long it took you to get to the internet in the 90’s? Now you can do it in seconds at your fingertips. Remember package delivery 20 years ago? It wasn’t overnight (stares at pile of amazon boxes in corner).

What is your personal experience with vaccine development? How long was the last one you took in development? Well, if it was influenza, it was developed that same year. I don’t know where this is going to end up so I will leave names out, but a project I worked on took less than 2 years with 1/1000th of the resources put towards the COVID-19 vaccine. I guarantee many of you have had this vaccine. You never thought to ask how long the development took. It was never a concern. The point is, most people do not have an accurate baseline for their timeline assessment.

Back to methodologies. One of the longest portions of the development process is cell culture. How long does cell culture take? Don’t know? See #2 above. However this is irrelevant because SURPRISE!…no cell culture needed in this one. I TRICKED YOU! See most vaccines inject you with a little bit of dead virus. Your body then recognizes this and then makes antibodies to yeet it TF outta there. That virus has to be grown or ‘cultured’.

mRNA vaccines are different.

They aren’t going to put any virus in you, dead or alive. What they are doing is (and this is very simplified) is giving your cells a signal to make a protein called the spike protein. That is the same spike protein found in Covid-19. But proteins alone can’t infect you. So your body is making its own protein but at the same time saying…hold up, we changed our minds. Antibodies get over here and boot these guys outta here. So now you have the antibodies that see ANY Covid-19 spike protein as something to attack. And your own body made it. Good job!

The Cake is a lie!

Let’s talk speed and resources. Another reason the development has been quick is resources. Anyone that tells you that phases have been skipped are probably the same people that were showing you the back of the Lysol can 8 months ago – ‘See…it says CORONAVIRUS RIGHT THERE!’ – or blaming 5G. I like how they are trying to pretend they never said any of this, but I digress. I will link a phase tracker below. And in case you didn’t know ‘pre-clinical’ means animal studies. The ‘they skipped animal studies’ people don’t know this. So the score is now you-1, them-0. 

But what does this have to do with cake? 

I am glad you asked. Let’s say I need to bake 100 cakes for some event that I am going to probably try and get out of anyway. It is going to take me all damn week. So say I get 10 of you to help me. Also we get 10 industrial mixers. One person can be our store runner cause they can’t cook no way. We have 5 ovens available. We are going to be done in no time. The recipe didn’t change. The ingredients didn’t change. The cook temp. didn’t change. The cook time didn’t change. The only thing that changed….is resources! Guess who’s got 100 cakes now son!

So you see…its not all that odd that we are going to have a very TIMELY vaccine. At the end of the day I am happy to get it and report back if you promise to stay in the house and stay safe while you wait for me to turn into a zombie. Or a super villain and take over the world.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.