Ted Nordhaus and Alex Trembath at The Breakthrough Institute:
As the United States and much of the rest of the world struggles through a winter of intensifying death and disease, it is worth remembering that beyond the present darkness lies the dawn, as newly approved vaccines become widely available, and with that, perhaps, a return to something resembling normalcy.
But even so, the post-vaccine world will also be changed in important ways — many for the better. The global biotech sector — a product of decades of public-private partnerships to develop superior medical technologies — appears to have produced effective vaccines in a remarkably short period of time using radically innovative technologies and immunity pathways. It will be the first-ever, broadly effective vaccine against a coronavirus of any sort, and hence, potentially opens the door to vaccinated immunity to a range of far more common maladies, from influenza to the common cold.
For this, among other reasons, the carnage that COVID-19 has wrought will not remotely rival pandemics past.
More here.