I've read a number of posts from others who seem to despair over the repeated waves of Covid-19, or complain about the changing recommendations about vaccination doses.
I think it's time to step back in time for a longer view at vaccinations. Let's look at measles vaccines. The original measles vaccine was first approved by the FDA back in 1963. It was said "Before the widespread use of a vaccine against measles, its incidence was so high that infection with measles was felt to be "as inevitable as death and taxes". This quote, as well as the other statements I quote below all come from the Wikipedia page on the MMR vaccine.
en.wikipedia.org
As you can see in the graph, measles cases dropped dramatically after the 1963 introduction of the vaccine. If you look closer at the horizontal axis, this drop didn't occur all at once – it took over 5 years.
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And even after 1968, there were several waves of measles breakouts. As a result of the breakout in 1989-90, a second dose was adopted as standard.
During the next years after 1963, vaccines against mumps and rubella were also developed. By 1971, these vaccines were combined into one single shot, the MMR vaccine. It's development was not trivial. It took a major effort, led by
Maurice Hilleman, who deserves recognition for his efforts at developing over 40 different vaccines, 8 of which are still in use today.
Over the years, the original measles vaccine went through a number of changes and developments that were aimed at achieving better immunization, and greater stability of the vaccine. I won't go into details, but some of them allowed long term storage without requiring expensive low temperature freezers. The second version of the combined MMR vaccine was freeze-dried (lyophilized) and contained 'live' viruses. It's still in use now. Before injection it gets reconstituted with a solvent provided. This sounds simple (Just like instant coffee!), but it's successful development actually was difficult and required a major effort to get it right. Early efforts at freeze drying resulted in 'dead' viruses, literally broken up by freezing & drying. There were ineffective vaccines.
My point is this – the various Covid-19 vaccines have been in use for less than a year. We should be comparing it to the slower development of the measles vaccines (in their various forms). We can see that we are expecting too much from what is clearly only the first round of vaccines against Covid-19. These first round vaccines have worked far better than anyone in the vaccine business ever hoped for, but it's clear there's still room for improvement.
