From someone I know:
A few things on the vaccines:
There is no way out of the pandemic without a robust vaccine and a large percentage of the population taking it. We can hope for a wonder therapy, but vaccines are the single most effective medical intervention that humanity and medical science have ever created. Remdesivir is not a silver bullet and it is only moderately useful. If your symptoms are mild you dont need it. If they are severe it won't help you.
Multiple vaccines are in phase 3 trials. Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AmGen/EliLilly, and AstraZenica/Oxford, Inovio and others have all shown strong indications of effectiveness with few adverse events. Its not as if there is one vaccine, but we have multiple high quality shots on goal. There are subtle differences with the vaccine development strategy here, but broadly they all target the viral spike protein. Blocking spike binding not only helps opsonization (T-cell killing) of the virus, but it also prevents viral entry into cells.
Of the halted trials, Inovio's was due to the vaccine delivery device (apparently something other than a standard syringe driven needle), and AZ's was due to two patients developing myelitis which is a serious, but very rare adverse event that can very, very, very rarely occurs (119 cases reported to the vaccine adverse event monitoring from 1987-2017). With any vaccination or viral infection in certain genetically susceptible people T-cell priming causes some host auto-immunity that typically resolves in these patients, but it certainly sucks.
On safety of vaccines vs other drugs - your tylenol and ibuprofen are both more dangerous than a vaccine. More people are hospitalized from liver injury from these OTC drugs than vaccines every year. I'm a study participant in the AstraZenica trial, my parents are enrolled in the Pfizer trial, my brother is in the J&J trial and the only member of my family who isn't enrolled in one of these can't because she's hoping for another kid.
Pfizer's data release did show close to 90% protection from symptoms in their trial arm vs placebo, and at that level, we will should need about 50% of the population to be vaccinated before we start to reduce R0 (transmission) below 1. The Warp Speed investment pushed a lot of funds into manufacturing these vaccines so it is likely we will have multiple viable, free or very cheap offerings that even if we need a booster annually, we can and will get out of this in the future.
There's a lot of media coverage out there that doesn't really understand the science and sadly a lot is politically motivated (e.g. masks F'ing work, use them). Mild asymptomatic infections lead to a weak antibody response, but so far B-cells which remember what pathogens your body has been exposed to, still can mount a response to the virus months later, but all coronaviruses have a lot of sneaky tools to disrupt immune recognition.
You should pay attention to what Andreyna is saying. You should pay attention to what the physicians and scientists and nurses are saying. Journalists interpret facts through a lens and the product that comes out is not always correct.
Several of our players are on the front-lines of this and have first hand experience with the worst of the pandemic. Respect this virus and respect your fellow players when they talk about how hard this is for them. Maybe your area "isn't that bad" because you don't see it, but nurses, doctors, and scientists are watching people with COVID die every single day.
Our team was on CNN again at 7-MST this morning, not because we were the worlds first group of scientists to discover how COVID reprograms your platelets to cause thrombosis and strokes, or how it causes pulmonary emboli trying to trap the virus, or why we develop blood vessel damage throughout the body - but because our hospital is over capacity and the director of our ICU is literally begging people to get their act together.
When the vaccine is available, take it.