No matter how hard you squint, or from what angle you look at it, the coronavirus vaccines are a triumph. They save lives today; they will eventually help end this pandemic; and they will pay scientific dividends for generations.
The whole picture: The pandemic is not over. There are still major threats and major problems to solve. But for all the things that have gone wrong over the past year, the vaccines have shattered even the most ambitious expectations.
The vaccines represent an “amazing scientific achievement for the world … unprecedented in the history of vaccination,” said Dan Barouch, an expert in virology and vaccinations at Harvard who worked on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Details: The development of a vaccine takes an average of ten years – if it works at all. Despite years of well-funded research, there are still no vaccines for, for example, HIV or malaria.
- We now have several COVID-19 vaccines, all developed in less than a year.
- The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are the first successful mRNA vaccines in the world – which, due to their oversimplification, teach our bodies to generate an immune response without relying on attenuated or inactivated viruses. This is a milestone that scientists have been working on for 30 years.
- The Moderna vaccine is the first of its kind licensed product of any kind.
Most importantly, all the leading vaccines work very well.
- All four vaccine or vaccine candidates in the US – from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – prevent coronavirus deaths and provide total or near-total protection against serious diseases.
- Some of the vaccines are more effective at preventing other mild or asymptomatic infections, but all exceed the FDA’s threshold to be considered effective.
The catch: On Sunday, South Africa stopped the distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine because it apparently would not work against the dangerous variant discovered there – which is spreading all over the world.
- The other vaccine manufacturers also said that their products are not as effective against the South African variant.
But that’s a reason for the rest of the world to lean in the existing vaccines, not to be wary of it.
- Viruses can mutate when widely distributed. The best defense against widespread variants is to vaccinate as many people as possible and do social distance to prevent the virus.
- Drug manufacturers may need to develop shots or new prescriptions to handle variants, but waiting for a vaccine that addresses each variant just leaves the door open for more variants.
Our biggest problems is not with the vaccines, but rather with the processes that surround them.
- Stocks must increase; distribution needs to become much more efficient; we must ensure that people get their second shots, if applicable; and people must be willing to be vaccinated as soon as they are eligible.
- This is a long and difficult list to do, and the wrong things can take the pandemic out for years. But if we can get the process right, the vaccines themselves are powerful enough to do the job.
‘Once the history of this has been written, they are referred to as some of the greatest achievements of science, ”Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina with a history of coronavirus, told Ezra Klein of The New York Times.
- “It’s the kind of thing you can have a national celebration after, and fireworks and church bells should ring, and all that,” she said.
It was not a miracle, and it did not happen overnight. “What we have seen over the past year is the result and culmination of decades of scientific progress,” Barouch said.
- Researchers have been building in the direction of mRNA vaccines for about 30 years, fueled by broader advances in genetic science.
- The same advances have also greatly accelerated genetic sequencing – so researchers were able to map COVID-19’s structure within a few weeks after the virus was discovered and then start working on potential vaccines.
What’s next: The vaccination battle is one of the few areas of this whole pandemic where the US and the world will be able to learn from our successes, rather than our failures.
- The scientist hopes that the breakthrough of successful mRNA vaccines will pave the way for a new generation of products that are more effective and easier to develop than previous vaccinations.
- Kicking money to vaccine developers and establishing early, step-by-step communication with regulatory agencies has also helped speed up this process, and may help re-emerge in future pandemics.
The conclusion: “Good funding, good science, and good cooperation with the regulatory agencies – so they could do something that I don’t think could be done in a year,” said Mark Slifka, an immunology professor at Oregon Health & Science University.