On 7 January 2022, I came across this, in ‘HORIZON: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine’ (1 April 2020 edition), an article about the mRNA vaccines – first developed to fight cancer in humans, by the way.

It stressed the fact that only NOW (less than two years ago) are these vaccines beginning to be tested in humans, and that there are a lot of fairly basic unknowns which can only be answered through human trials. The following professor of microbiology – Professor Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding –  was quoted many times in the piece.

Prof Isabelle is Chair of the IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) Scientific Committee, Head of Microbiology at Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines, Langen, Germany.

Prof Isabelle’s fields of expertise are: Immunology of infection & host-pathogen interaction. Clinical microbiology and infectious disease. Pharmaceutical microbiology. Regulation of vaccines and biomedicines.

In relation to our innate immune response system, as humans, to the mRNA vaccine, Prof Isabelle said, less than two years ago:

1 “There is still a lot of work to be done to understand this response, the length of the protection it could give and whether there are any downsides.”

2 “What is really the current challenge, I think, is to understand whether these vaccines will really be able to mount a sufficiently protective immune response in the human and to understand, for example, which quantities of mRNA will be needed to do this.”

Prof Isabelle also stated that the mRNA is ‘easier and faster to produce” (than traditional vaccines) and is a “very unique way of making a vaccine and, so far, no such vaccine has been licenced for infectious disease.”

Just eight months after Isabelle’s comments, on the 8 December 2020, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan received the first Covid 19 vaccine in the UK – the trials were underway, although there was no mention of them being trials, because legally they were not trials!

In the USA, the vaccine was approved for emergency use, while in the UK, the government’s independent expert scientific advisory body, known as the Commission on Human Medicines, had been carrying out a ‘rigorous, scientific and detailed (rolling) review of all available data’ since October 2020 ie only two months before Margaret received her vaccine.

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Chief Executive, Dr June Raine said: The public’s safety has always been at the forefront of our minds – safety is our watchword. I’m really pleased to say that the UK is now one step closer (remember, she said this, two months before the vaccine went public) to providing a safe and effective vaccine to help in the fight against COVID-19.

My question is: when will we see the results of the safety and effectiveness of the C19 vaccines. Soon?

I ASSUME THAT WE ARE ANOTHER ‘STEP CLOSER’ BY NOW?