(10r) Development, approval and follow-up of vaccines - a summary

Medicines and vaccines, always an assessment between benefits and risks as explained in the Guardian; I've written before in great length about the development, approval and safety follow-up of any possible risks (see Pharmaceutical companies need to earn money to improve their products, Codeine as an example how product information of medicines continue to change, Generic drugs - and the cost to develop the real stuff and an older post that explains the origins of the important regulation Thalidomide - And the apology that angered its victims. 

As the pandemic resulted in large numbers of people either death or severely ill for months while other people don't even show symptoms when they test positive for SARS-CoV-2, we were lucky that the scientific knowledge but also pharmaceutical companies are much advanced. The result: a speedy development of a number of vaccines.

Of course, many people are unsure about these vaccines and have questions, certainly when you know that in general it take years before medicinal products are developed and clinical studies show they are safe for (a subset of) people. Indeed, in science you can only progress when you ask questions and don't take anything for granted unless it has been proven unreservedly such as "the planet is a sphere and not flat". 

Now, within a year after the emergence of the virus, people are being vaccinated as development and clinical studies were allowed to be fast to prevent more victims of the virus. As a result, medicine agencies expected side-effects may become visible, the reason why they are open and inform the public via their websites to show they have nothing to hide and they follow the safety of the vaccines closely. 

Up to now, the vaccines suggest they are safe as millions of people have been vaccinated. But, a few people died after developing blood clots after their vaccination. Of course, this needs to be investigated to understand why these mainly younger people died. The virus is gentler for younger people and thus a question may be whether these people need to be vaccinated. As older people are priority, there may be time to understand why certain peoples died in order to prevent more people die after they receive a vaccine. Maybe these people have also a higher risk to die from Covid-19? Otherwise when we don't understand, the benefit of vaccination may be sufficiently larger than the risk that someone dies after vaccination compared with the risk of serious complications when they catch the virus so the vaccination of everyone continues. 

The job of medicine agencies, pharmaceutical companies and scientists in general: to investigate any troubles to find solutions so all people have a chance they can be helped; today this means that they are vaccinated in safety. But first, some people may die before we understand and can prevent more deaths by giving another vaccine or a drug that may counter the side-effect.

This was first published on Facebook on 06/04/2021

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