Some (Just a Little) Good News, Finally

I am tired of reading about vaccines.  In fact, I've stopped reading about vaccines.  Wake me up sometime next year, when we're nearly there.

But it seems that the work on the COVID-19 vaccine has already propelled us, all unknowing, into one small corner of the new world.  Apparently, vaccines will never be the same again.

The current pandemic is not, of course, the worst we have ever seen.  The 1918 flu killed millions; the Black Plague, half of Europe.  But it is dangerous, it spreads like wildfire, and no one in their right mind wants to get it.  So the work of creating a safe, effective vaccine has taken on a special urgency around the world.

And this effort - truly enormous, using the highest of tech and supported to the fullest - has resulted in innovations that will very possibly allow for the next pandemic vaccine to be developed much more quickly.

The new world, we are told, will contain much more innovative vaccine trial designs, such as running human and animal trials in parallel.  New types of vaccines are being developed - for instance, those based on messenger RNA - and are being found useful.  And the speed with which the virus's genome was decoded and shared worldwide - a necessary step before we can even begin any high-speed work on a vaccine - was unprecedented, and there's no reason to believe that this won't become the norm.  And as research into side effects continues, databases are being shared globally, reducing redundancy and increasing reliability of results.

After the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was formed.  Launched in 2017 (without the US's participation) , CEPI "aims to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and enable access to these vaccines for people during outbreaks.  These folks were ready, and now they're funding nine different candidate vaccines, more than any other organization in the world.  So going forward, there is an international, full-time, well-funded scientific community standing as the first line of defense against the next pandemic. 

And the new world will apparently include universal adult immunization.  Once the vaccine is widely available, herd immunity can be achieved if everyone gets it, or enough get immunized that the virus finds it impossible to spread.  That's how we did it with all those communicable diseases that our kids get shots for, but for COVID-19, we adults will have to join in.  Right now about a third of us get our flu shots every year; once the COVID-19 vaccine is added to the mix, they'll become more popular.  I can't find anyone who's willing to estimate what percentage of the population needs to be immunized to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19, but there's general agreement that the technical term "just about everyone" will come close.

So, good news.  You're welcome.  Now prepare to return to your regular diet of distress and despair.