The Great Vaccine Race: Inside the Unprecedented Scramble to Immunize the World Against COVID-19

The cleverest of enemies thrive on surprise attacks. Viruses—and coronaviruses in particular—know this well. Remaining hidden in animal hosts for decades, they mutate steadily, sometimes serendipitously morphing into more effective and efficient infectious agents. When a strain with just the right combination of genetic codes that spell trouble for people makes the leap from animal to human, the ambush begins. Such was the case with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind COVID-19, and the attack was mostly silent and insidious at first. Many people infected with SARS-CoV-2 remained oblivious as they served as the virus’s new home and allowed it to establish a foothold in the global human population. These hosts were the perfect base camp for launching the attack that has upended social norms, economies, political systems and more all across the world. The best hope for confronting this onslaught is a vaccine—if the furious research efforts underway yield effective shots, if manufacturers can distribute them to enough people and if enough of those people actually get immunized. Vaccines rely on the idea of herd immunity, a type of biological fortress in which the vast majority of the population is protected against infection. One way to get there is via natural infection, which involves enough people getting infected and recovering without serious consequences. But many public-health experts say pushing to open businesses and schools, so healthy people who...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Magazine Source Type: news
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