COVID-19 vaccine researchers draw on knowledge from history’s ‘huge disasters’ and success stories – ABC News

A post-coronavirus world depends on a vaccine. Without it, there’s no returning to “normal life” anytime soon.
Fortunately, scientists working on a COVID-19 vaccine have decades of scientific knowledge and technological advancements on their side.
While vaccines usually take years or even decades to develop, after early breakthroughs some medical experts believed this one might be available in 12 to 18 months.
Now, months later, human trials are even underway.
What can the failures and successes of past vaccine research tell us about the challenges ahead?
The first vaccines
The military has largely driven the past century of vaccine research, says Arthur Allen, the author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver.
“After the last great pandemic which was the 1918-19 flu pandemic, the US military and other militaries around the world saw infectious disease as a threat to their forces,” he tells ABC RN’s Rear Vision.
The Spanish flu outbreak killed about 50 million people worldwide.(Getty: PhotoQuest)
“During World War I, there was an attempt to make a flu vaccine which was a total failure. They didn’t know what flu was,” Mr Allen says.
By World War II researchers were beginning to understand what viruses were and laboratories across the US were enlisted to make vaccines for illnesses like Japanese encephalitis and typhus.
But one of the most important breakthroughs was still to come.
What can polio research teach us?
People in the early 20th century feared polio because of its ability to cause paralysis, especially in children.
Vaccines expert Andrew Artenstein says many people who contracted polio either had mild symptoms or no symptoms.
Driven by fear more children would become paralysed by polio, the US funded further vaccine research.(Getty: Kirn Vintage Stock)
“It was extraordinarily scary. It seemed to be a random event

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