Think about how Covid might have been different if, say, 50 percent of the world’s urban population had switched into this mode on Feb. 1, 2020. We are learning from Covid in a more obvious way as well: through the lens of science. The contrast with Covid could not be more extreme: We isolated the SARS-CoV-2 virus about 20 days after the outbreak was first reported. It’s important to remember that mRNA vaccines were a promising, if unproven, line of inquiry for years before the pandemic hit; no one could say for sure that they even worked. If the successful mass rollout of the Covid vaccines winds up accelerating the timeline for these other vaccines, the impact on human life will be enormous.

Source: New York Times November 24, 2021 03:45 UTC