I ran this piece by some folks with relevant science training, and they think it's plausible if optimistic; a couple of interesting points:
It will probably take at least 18 months, but the biopharmaceutical industry will surmount the technical challenges to create a vaccine for Covid-19. Some think that’s not possible, since we haven’t created vaccines to the four human coronaviruses that regularly cause common colds. This is a misconception.
The lack of a vaccine against those viruses is hardly because of technical challenges. We can make a vaccine against a coronavirus—we’ve even got several for chickens. The reasons we don’t vaccinate against human coronaviruses explain a lot about the economics of clinical development and the way we think about drugs, vaccines, and risk as patients. They also illuminate why drug companies seem to respond to certain therapeutic challenges, while ignoring others.
Our four standard human coronaviruses cause only 20 percent of colds. The other 80 percent are mostly caused by rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus (not the same as influenza), and other viruses we haven’t even identified yet. They are all so different that each would require a different vaccine. So while we could have made a coronavirus vaccine (which might have had to be four vaccines, one for each strain), the trouble is that it would have helped protect against only 20 percent of the viruses that cause colds.
So even if that vaccine reduced your risk of suffering a coronavirus-mediated cold by 75 percent (a pretty good result), that would cut the total risk of getting any cold by only 15 percent (75 percent of 20 percent)...Adults get two to four colds a year, some of which they might hardly notice, so a 15 percent reduction doesn’t even add up to one fewer cold per year, on average....
[B]ack to Covid-19. It is hardly the common cold. In fact, it’s way more serious than the flu.... So we’ll develop a vaccine for it, just as we have for the flu. It might cost a few billion dollars across a dozen different programs to ensure that one or more succeed, but that cost won’t matter: there will be a market. And that market is likely here for the long run, since it’s doubtful we’ll eradicate SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
Just as several companies compete for a share of the global $4 billion flu vaccine market, supplying the world with a constantly evolving yet affordable seasonal flu vaccines, we’ll eventually have affordable Covid-19 vaccines, likely from several manufacturers.
