Fauci said he's cautiously optimistic for the end of this year or early next year. So I'll go with that. Reason for optimism we may have it this year, but could also go later.
I'm also not sure whether he just meant that it could exist then or if that's when it would be distributed.
Unless things have changed, Bill Gates' foundation has been prepping the seven most likely vaccine candidates for mass production, so that if/when one of them proves out, it can go immediately into mass production without the time lag that would normally require.
Bill Gates, Backer of Inovio And Six Others, Says Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Mass Produced Within A Year"If everything went perfectly, we'd be in scale manufacturing within a year," Gates told CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "It could be as long as two years."
The technology entrepreneur said he agrees with White House Coronavirus Task Force lead member Anthony Fauci's timeline of 12 to 18 months for mass-producing a vaccine.
"It's very hard to compress these timeframes," he added, saying that the phase three trials, which determine if the drug has harmful side effects, will take time.
(I don't think depending on altruistic billionaires is a good long-term way for society to function, but Gates is definitely doing some good here.)
Yeah, Gates has shown true leadership through this crisis. Dude deserves a Nobel for filling in the gap left by a rudderless US federal government/international community.
