The flurry of announcements made by vaccine manufacturers in the last couple of weeks — from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca to Sputnik V and CoronaVac — brings a glimmer of hope in a year that has been so full of uncertainties. The Economist magazine described the feeling in a simple but powerful headline: Suddenly, hope.
The news of the vaccine was the answer the world was breathlessly waiting for.
Stock markets soared and the joke was Zoom was the only one not celebrating. The Donald Trump team was on every platform taking credit for the vaccine development. “This vaccine is possible because of hard work and Trump-style ingenuity. Back on 13 January, when this novel virus just came to our shores, Trump had already partnered with Moderna,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News.
It has been a year since a few patients in China fell sick with a ‘mysterious virus’. Eventually dubbed SARS-CoV-2, the virus infected our lives. For many, it has meant loss of loved ones; for others, it has cost them their livelihood. Many people’s mental health has taken a plunge.
But the news about vaccines has brought a glimmer of hope — or would it be more appropriate to say, the glimmer of a needle? The stocks of travel and airline companies have gone up, an indicator of a better year ahead.
With both Pfizer and Moderna as well as developers of Sputnik V and CoronaVac citing over 90 per cent efficacy of their respective vaccines, the world finally has reason to think that 2021 will bring a chance to start our lives afresh. And that’s why vaccine is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
Also read: What a 95% effective Covid vaccine can do is pretty exciting
When the world came together
Pandemics are not new to humans, and neither are vaccines. But the story of the coronavirus vaccine is one of unprecedented human resilience, innovation and global scientific collaborations.
Take Moderna, for example, the first company to launch the human clinical trial for the coronavirus vaccine. The 10-year-old firm has no approved drug to its credit, and yet, by 14 January, its vaccine candidate was ready.
That was days before the US had confirmed the first Covid-19 case. How did the company create the vaccine even before the virus had reached the country?
On 12 January, China had shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus — the ‘code’ that tells us everything we need to know about the virus. Armed with this information, scientists at Moderna developed their candidate within two days.
Other pharmaceuticals also worked at breakneck speed to develop vaccine candidates as it became clearer that a vaccine was going to be the only hope to — if possible — end the pandemic that showed no signs of abating.
Despite strict lockdowns, travel bans and work from home orders, the coronavirus could not be stopped from turning our bodies against ourselves. Economies plunged, but the Covid-19 curve kept rising.
Though doctors have managed to bring down death rates, the uncertainty and fear that the virus has brought has no cure.
The images of sourdough starters and dolgona coffees may have flooded our social media in the first month of the nationwide lockdown. But it’s the heartbreaking and painful images of silent, long walks of migrant labourers that can never be forgotten.
Even after months of staying indoors, living our lives through screens — the Covid-19 numbers did not go down. When it became clear that we could no longer sustain our livelihoods locked inside our homes, we had to slowly open up our economy, and learn to live our lives in a tunnel with the constant threat of disease, death and loss.
The stocks of Zoom Video soared — a clear indication that the world had resigned to the possibility of being restricted to video conferencing for the foreseeable future.
The best minds of the globe reminded us constantly to wash hands, maintain social distancing, and wear masks — because a vaccine takes up to 10 years before it finally becomes available for mass usage.
Also read: Tracking side effects will be the next big challenge for Pfizer, Moderna Covid vaccines
Hope on horizon, but questions remain
From the time the first polio vaccine trials, though with disastrous results, were conducted in 1935, it took more than a couple of decades to develop the vaccines that are available in their current successful form. Another few decades went into executing a successful polio eradication programme — and such a timeline is considered phenomenal for eradicating a disease.
But never before has this generation encountered a virus of this scale, and never before have we been this technologically advanced to deal with it.
The mRNA vaccines — which both Moderna and Pfizer have developed — are a relatively newer technology, which took form somewhere in the 1990s. The other vaccine technologies, such as the inactivated vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech, have existed for decades.
The question is: Will these Covid-19 vaccines protect humans outside the laboratory? As human trials proceed, it appears they are safe and will most likely be effective.
But there are other questions too: Which vaccine would be most suitable for a country? How will it be stored and transported? Who will be vaccinated first? How will we manufacture enough doses for the whole world? A lot remains to be done. Creating a safe and effective vaccine is just one part of disease eradication. Vaccinating the population is a whole different ball game, considering how a vaccination programme of this scale has never been carried out before.
Nevertheless, experts are confident that existing health care frameworks — such as the polio eradication programme in India and Africa’s experience with the Ebola outbreak — will be helpful. At least now we have multiple promising vaccine candidates and, according to The New York Times, “at least 87 preclinical vaccines are under active investigation in animals”.
As 2020 ends, there is a needle at the end of the tunnel. The glimmer brings promise of a new year where we can once again hug our grandmothers, dance our nights away in packed nightclubs, and kiss strangers in foreign lands.
Views are personal.
India has the highest cases of Covid-19 in the world after the USA with over 9 million cases. The least affected countries in the world are OIC ( Muslim countries ) as the IPL matches shifted to a Muslim country U.A.E and the England cricket team going to play in Pakistan. In India, majority of the people are Hindus and they are very religious but their practicing of religion differs from the teachings of their most holy scriptures. Apart from Hindus, Muslims are also very religious and they practice according to their holy scriptures. Had the Hindus done the same by practicing the religion as per their scriptures then India could have also been the safest and least affected by Covid. Now, there is no reason for the Hindus and Muslims to remain divided anymore on the basis of religion as the fundamental religious belief of Islam and Hinduism is the same to worship only One God.
Thanks to this information age as Hindus and Muslims will now come closer and pray together to defeat the Covid-19. Now it is the duty of the Muslims to invite the Hindus as brothers in humanity to come to a common term between us that we worship none but One God and associate no partner to Him and invite them to the Way of One Almighty God with beautiful preaching and logic as per our scriptures which say, There is only One God, worship Him, Ekam Evadvitiyam, He is One only without a Second. There is no deity but God.