There are some drawbacks, with monoclonals being more vulnerable to the emergence of escape variants than vaccines, but this is a sensible proposal (the other major drawback is price, but that is a regulatory and not scientific issue).
"As a dual-purpose platform technology, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) can close the gap in prophylaxis that exists with a vaccine-only approach and serve as a therapeutic option where needed. Thus, the development of an arsenal of ready-to-use prophylactic and therapeutic mAbs could help to rapidly contain future infectious disease outbreaks before they evolve into pandemics."
@teixi Yes, that's one way of looking at it. Vaccines are a preventive measure, monoclonals are most likely to work early, and we have a very poor toolkit for serious disease. It may seem odd, but the reason is that for the monoclonal directly targets the virus, which is what you want in the acute phase; but the serious illness is much more complex - and not necessarily directly dependent on viral replication anymore. Excessive inflammation, occasional autoimmune issues and a variety of stress & damage responses are massive problems at that stage. It's why the first drugs to show any real clinical improvement were steroids and other immune modulators.
@cyrilpedia
still unclear to me: vaccines are most usefulness are for prophylaxis, thus their ineffectiveness start upon infection.
So then monoclonals are most usefulness upon infection starts; yet monoclonals ineffectiveness starts upon infection becomes critical illness?