I somewhat agree with this. I suspect that the average person is putting too much stock in a vaccine. If we can stop COVID within a year with a vaccine, that would be an unprecedented achievement. And if we do have one in that time frame, it might be more like the flu vaccine (helpful, but not nearly 100% effective) than the smallpox vaccine (utterly eradicating). As FlyBitCoin says, a drug safe enough to be applied early during the infection might be more impactful than a vaccine.

However, I think the pessimism is overdone. First, malaria isn't even caused by a virus. HIV mutates much faster than COVID, as does the flu, so its not a relevant comparison. The article recently posted had the scary headline "the virus will mutate" but then they go on to say that it's actually mutating very slowly and not in any significant way (so far). There has never before been this much investment in vaccines. The numbers of candidate vaccines is awesome, and various parties (like Bill Gates and Trump) seem willing to build the factories before the vaccine has been tested. And the technology obviously has never been better or faster. The government is fast-tracking like never before.

I was worried at first that the virus would be considered too dangerous for challenge trials (where they just give you the virus right up your nose), forcing us to take a slower approach where you wait months and see who gets infected. But it sounds like they might allow challenge trials for healthy young people.

Another factor here is that COVID seems uncontainable, so it probably won't just end quickly like SARS did. And, due to the lockdowns, the pandemic might not burn out in the near future due to herd immunity either. It looks like its going to be a long haul.