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1. So there are questions surrounding the vaccines that have been developed particularly around the speed of development and whether this has an impact on their safety and efficacy. I will try to unpack some of the questions as far as I understand the science.
2. Why have had a very fast development of the vaccine? There are a lot of reasons for this. For starters, SARS-Cov-2 is "novel" but not necessarily "new". Scientists had been studying SARS family of viruses since the first SARS outbreak.
3. Also, China provided enough detail and samples for the rest of the world to decipher the full architecture of the virus. This gave scientists drug design targets not only vaccines but even antibody cocktails to help patients.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-020-0485-4
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41401-020-0485-4
4. The advent of platform technologies also allowed scientists to ramp up methods on how to safely deliver possible vaccines. This technology is like an assembly line for cars, you use the same chasis base and build diff cars around it. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-020-0746-0
5. In fact, because of the aforementioned reasons Moderna was able to design the current vaccine in 48hrs! The world has moved very far in terms of high end tech and it is sad that this has not been really a priority for Africa save for SA and a few.
https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-detail?articleid=30034&publicId=395
https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-detail?articleid=30034&publicId=395
5. The biggest impediment in drug development is investment. However, Govts preordered vaccines so it means that whatever costs the companies were going to face in developing vaccines they already had a paying customer.
6. The other issue is recruitment of participants for clinical trials. Normally, it takes years to recruit people into drug trials. For COVID-19 however, many people volunteered in record time and this allowed vaccine research and clinical trials simultaneously.
7. A critical issue in drug rollout is authorization. Many drug development companies face significant hurdles in terms of authorizations, there is a rigorous process of review of every drug candidate and safety ranks highly.
8. Ok so everything checks out...well no. There are still some caveats and areas of concern around the current vaccines. A group of scientists at MIT are concerned that despite the great computational work done by Pfizer and others, there are still gaps in coverage.
9. The way our bodies interact with foreign bugs is down to a cell receptors whose structure is determined by HLA genes. So these HLA genes are variable across different populations and it is necessary to factor this in new vaccine designs. https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(20)30238-6#comments-heading
10. Because of the above mentioned issues, scientists at MIT estimate that the vaccines may be less effective in minority racial groups because the platform used to design them might have not adequately factored those genetic differences in HLAs. see link
https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/mit-study-covid-19-vaccines-may-be-less-effective-asian-americans
https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/mit-study-covid-19-vaccines-may-be-less-effective-asian-americans
11. The current vaccines are vectored vaccines, meaning that they are delivered through a vector. In this case the vector is an adenosine type 5 viral vector. Some researchers who have used this vector have expressed concerns especially in using this in high HIV prevalence areas
12. This small paper (2 pages), gives a cautionary warning to countries that have high HIV infection rates. They speak of their experience in using the Ad type 5 vector in that they saw increased risk of contracting HIV. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32156-5/fulltext
13. It is important to note though that the current vaccine trials have NOT shown this to be the case. It would be important to verify this especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thankfully SA has been part of the trials so we all await the results from that vaccine trial.
14. Ok so these are just some of the things to think about and discuss. I wanted to give a balanced view of the valid concerns and also assurances we can have if we decide to get vaccinated. The links posted in the thread are a great start for anyone interested to explore. 
