December 22, 2021
After nearly two years of the pandemic, the first wave of vaccines have performed magnificently but also showed their limitations. In the United States, 240 million people are fully vaccinated, and an enormous amount of suffering and death has been averted. But vaccine efficacy began to wane, the need for boosters arose, and a new coronavirus variant is upending everything all over again. Is this the new normal?Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
Not necessarily. On top of the extraordinary biomedical achievements of the mRNA vaccines, efforts are underway to discover and develop new vaccines and other therapies for a second and third wave of pandemic response. The covid emergency has unleashed an unprecedented surge of innovation and teamwork in research. Just as the virus has spread around the world, so have scientists become more adept at rapid response, sharing genetic sequences and clinical data at the speed of light, enabling still more discovery.
Read more at The Washington Post.