Advisory Board July 30, 2020
Ever since the new coronavirus emerged as a global threat, public health officials have repeated the same warning: Shutdowns, masks, and social distancing can help to contain the virus—but the pandemic won’t truly end until we get a vaccine.
But what does it mean to “get a vaccine”?
It’s not enough, after all, to devise a single dose of vaccine in a hermetically sealed laboratory. We must also conduct clinical trials to prove that vaccine is effective, manufacture it in mind-boggling quantities under impeccably sanitary conditions, dispense it into hundreds of millions of vials, ship it (perhaps under refrigeration) to every city and village in the country, and inject it into the arms of nearly every single American.