The problem is essentially that people (including myself) who know very little about science are not in any sort of position to judge how well or badly scientists are doing in relation to Covid-19 (or anything else, for that matter). We don't know the right questions to ask, and are unable to understand, let alone evaluate any answers we may receive. Moreover, we are mostly governed by scientifically illiterate and innumerate politicians, who want scientists to provide simple answers to incredibly complex problems.
Well put. There comes a point when someone not actively working in a field has to say, "Now, will you please explain your explanation?" As patent attorneys, we have a broad grasp of science and can turn our hands to all sorts of technologies. However, I am often confronted by really quite brilliant chemists and I have to struggle to comprehend what it is that they're trying to get across, and then put that in writing.
In the case of biology, it was only the day before yesterday that Crick and Watson gave us the double helix of DNA. Since then, we have made astonishing strides in understanding it. However, this is part of a system that has evolved over billions of years, and we still don't comprehend anything like all of it. While we make a chemical product by dumping stuff together, adding harsh reagents, cooking the living daylights out of it and then congratulating ourselves when we get a 50% yield, Mother Nature's reactions go to 100% completion at body temperature. It's all done by enzymes, immensely complex natural catalysts, things that looks like this:
In theory, it can take up 10 to the power of 6 configurations, in fact, it only ever takes up one - nobody knows why. I've even heard scientists say that it verges on the miraculous!
Because of all that we don't know, our treatments for disease verge on being sledgehammers used to crack walnuts. This is why pharmaceutical products have to go through clinical trials, to ensure that the stuff doesn't cure the disease by killing the patient, and to ensure that any side-effects aren't so extreme as to make the stuff practically unusable.
Cracking the structure of the Covid-19 virus was the easy bit. The questions then are (a) what sort of antibodies do we need to counter it? and (b) how do we generate these in the body? This is what a vaccine does. Some vaccines are denatured versions of the virus itself, but these don't always work. As a result, the whole business takes time. The OP was frustrated with the slow progress, but that's the way the business works, and there can be no other way, unless he is prepared to countenance the methods pioneered by Dr. Mengele in Auschwitz or the infamous Japanese Unit 731 in China.
Things can be worse - an old friend in Novartis took a compound from the laboratory bench to a registered drug. It only took 15 years! I suspect any vaccine will be somewhat quicker. And hopefully the thing won't mutate too much. When I was a kid, the big fear was polio, but the Salk vaccine finished that off, because the polio virus doesn't mutate. I can only hope that the thing doesn't mutate as rapidly as the cold or 'flu viruses, which is why they've never been cured.
