Recently talking with my dad about all the situation and the vaccines, he brought up a case he studied when doing an MBA in the 90's: a vaccine where they used rats as bio-reactors. In tests and trials the vaccine was great, but it was so hard to produce and care for thousands of rats during the incubation period that in the end it wasn't economically viable.
He vaguely remembers the case as something from the 50's or the 60's and todya we have better technology all around. But yes, I understand that most labs working on vaccines do take into account the potential difficulties in production.
The economics will be different (more interesting/tempting) indeed. The point of the anecdote was that vaccine fabrication has been understood for a long time in the context of the scale it's required (again, the case was from the 50s-60s). I don't think any of the "promising vaccines" that are being tested now would fall in the trap of such a production scaling problem. Labs know this will be demanded in the billions.
He vaguely remembers the case as something from the 50's or the 60's and todya we have better technology all around. But yes, I understand that most labs working on vaccines do take into account the potential difficulties in production.