What the world is capable of.

The day before Christmas Eve, a 90-year-old from Lucerne has received as first the vaccination in Switzerland against Covid-19.

 With the second syringe in four weeks, her personal spook should be over.

At this point, more and more countries are getting the vaccinations. The virus is still the Enemy, but we're fighting it now with the confidence that we will win this war soon. If that is the case, the world would have got away with this problem with relatively low consequences: but can we really say this in the view of 1.7 million deaths (to-date) and widespread economic devastation? Yes, we may.

 We have been lucky in misfortune, and that for several reasons.

First, because the virus is not that deadly like others that have already haunted humanity.

A hundred years ago the Spanish flu raged around the world. New research estimates that influenza virus, which was based on three Waves, was responsible for 50 to 100 million deaths.

From India, China, Europe to the last corner of Alaska the pandemic spread and killed younger people.

In contrast to ours Great-grandparents we can now consider ourselves lucky, because science could decipher the viruses’ blueprints, while back then the world was badly prepared for a Pandemic.

For once today we have had the right minds in politics and in the pharmaceutical industry, supporting each other and cooperating with organizations and regulators from the start.

The titanic dimension of the task can hardly be grasped.

Never before it has been created a vaccine within such a short period of time, and made it available for distribution to 7.8 billion people. The vision is comparable to that of US President John F. Kennedy, as he promised in 1961 to all Americans and the world to send the first man to the moon: it took nine years and not, like in this case, twelve months.

An important difference between now and 1961 it is that various global interest groups have been involved and not just NASA.

 The development of several vaccines in such a short time is a triumph of science.

It was only possible thanks to one unprecedented and often unselfish cooperation of many actors.

It started with the Chinese scientists on January 10th, as they shared the dates of sequenced Covid-19 genome with the professional community.

This freely accessible information allowed scientists around the Globus to start overnight their review projects.

Could have been one of those approaches to drugs or vaccines the right recipe against the virus?

The idea a global collaboration was taken up in March, as the World Health Organization proclaimed the pandemic.

In no time, leaders of the pharmaceutical companies came to an agreement to insist on research and open share platforms with competitors, put budgets into this fight and agreed to help each other out with production capacities. A one-off process in the pharma-branch: and the authorities watching over competition regulations gave their okay to this approach. Parallel to these actions, the US and the EU gradually pumped billions in government funds to private companies.

At the same time, the regulators checked with the companies that data from clinical trials had started to arrive.

Even this kind of regulatory flexibility is a novelty in an extreme regulated industry. The World Health Organization worked in parallel with public-private Partners such as the global alliance for vaccines and with philanthropic donors like the Gates Foundation to ensure rapid supply to poor countries. Last week the WHO could announce a global alliance for vaccines, that by 2021 would secure a total of around two billion vaccine doses to poor countries, financed by substantial donations by countries, companies and private individuals. 

Were there also incidents and things that didn't go as hoped? Lots of them.

Have we had overwhelmed incompetent managers and stubborn politicians? Absolutely.

Are there any other hurdles? Undisputed.

The accusations some aid organizations have had against the pharmaceutical manufacturers, which the portray as the major crisis winners, do not really stand. In fact, it seems more like some of those aid organizations not even in the pandemic event have managed to get out of their usual thought patterns.

Despite all the hurdles though, thanks to several vaccines we can globally push back this virus by the end of 2021, when reasonably a normal life and work will be possible again.

The year 2020 will then be remembered as the irrefutable proof of what humanity can achieve when working together towards a goal.

It may sound cheesy, but the old president Barack Obama campaign’ slogan comes to mind, as it never fitted better than today: "Yes, we can!"

(Based on NZZ-article by Birgit Voigt, 27.12.2020)