More Dakka for Coronavirus: We need immediate human trials of many vaccine-candidates and simultaneous manufacturing of all of them

There are multiple players that could do this.

The obvious one is China. China can speed up clinical trials without bureaucratic red tape in a way that the US and Europe can't. Unfortunately, there's little that our community can do to affect Chinese decision making.

The less obvious is the UK. Politically pulling of the stunt of creating the first effective vaccine against the corona-virus would be very good to show the advantages that the UK has through Brexit that allow it to operate outside of EU red tape.

Dominic Cummings seems to be open to rationalist argument and also powerful enough to push through a policy like this.

Related question, how dangerous is it to test a vaccine without animal trials [LW · GW]

So why won't this happen?

Part of the problem is the incentive structure faced by regulators. If they allow a vaccine out that kills 100 people they will be crucified. On the other hand if they delay a vaccine and 10,000 people die then nothing bad will happen to them. There are few incentives to make balanced assessments of risk/reward.

You have the same problem with the introduction of strong measures to control the Wuhan virus. It seems that in almost every country things have to get pretty bad before there is support to do anything serious. Taiwan is one of the very few exceptions:

Please note Taiwan's swift response. “42 confirmed cases & 1 death.”

Taiwan’s epidemic prevention policy (EPP) i. Travel limitations ii. Cancel big gatherings iii. Public health interventions iv. Behavioural changes v. Daily briefings vi. Compensation vii. Counter disinformation

I see in President Trump's announcement of a state of emergency he has cut some red tape inhibiting mass testing. So it is maybe not an entirely lost cause.

The Trump administration seems to be willing to take serious action to boost vaccine development: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-and-us-wrestle-over-coronavirus-vaccine/a-52777990

This seems to be a genius move to get the German government to do anything needed to boost the development of CureVac.

Reading this post with the power of hindsight one downside for a more aggressive strategy is obvious: Trust.

The Oxford AstraZenica vaccine is, by any reasonable standards safe. A tiny fraction of the people it is administered to have blood clots, but the only reason this is even known is because it has been given to millions of people. If the sample wasn't so large we could lack the statistics to resolve the effect from coincidence. Yet, people are still quite worried about this vaccine, some governments dismiss it.

So, a faster more aggressive vaccine testing process, with the actual rollout starting at the point where your info is "its safe, and probably works" instead of waiting till you know "its safe and does work" definitely wins on trolley problem logic: until all the anti-vacers point to the one thing you rolled out that did not work. Or they point to the few people who were on the wrong side of that trolley arithmetic and died from a side-effect.

This isn't to say you are wrong, just that their is an additional non-obvious cost to that kind of approach.

PS:  I love the title. Reminds me of the website DakkaDakka, where, if I recall, one person lays out the units they have selected for their army in a wargame, then 20 people respond in all caps "NEEDS MORE DAKKA!".

If anyone here is in or near Seattle -

This vaccine trial is recruiting volunteers in that area: https://corona.kpwashingtonresearch.org/
It's testing the safety of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that uses a new vaccine technology: mRNA in lipid nanoparticles; the idea is a few decades old, I think, but no vaccine using this tech has been approved for human use yet.

I've previously read news on animal testing protocol already being sidestepped: https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-vaccine-trial-no-animal-testing.html

The way society works currently this can’t happen, but it’s a good insight into what an actually competent civilization would do.

Edit: After reading ChristianKI’s comment I’m realizing I was focusing overmuch on the US. Other countries might be able to manage it.

Is the coconut oil thing for real? Are they suggesting a clinical trial where people just eat 3 tbsp/day of coconut oil and it's expected to have a significant antiviral effect? Or is it something more complicated?