By George Howsen
With the relentless negativity coming from the pandemic with negative story after negative story, like the crisis in India, and people endlessly disregarding social distancing rules. Some positivity relevant to this particular situation is sorely needed, specifically in the form of the ongoing development and distribution of vaccines.
Developing the COVID vaccines was quite the bumpy ride. As soon as COVID began to blow up there were no shortage of ‘cures’ coming from all sorts of sources. Select social media influencers claiming that if you thought you had recently been infected that you could simply drink water and it would wash the virus down to your stomach where the acid would kill it off.
There was the usual brigade of essential oil salespeople, claiming their all-natural solutions would do away with it. There were even a few religious fundamentalists that claimed that their patented silver solution was the cure or even that they had ended the pandemic all together with the power of Jesus.
While many different institutions globally were working towards a vaccine, there were also some more malicious goings on courtesy of certain governments.
Several intelligence agencies including the National Cyber Security Centre of the U.K, and the Homeland Security Department of Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (mouth full, much), determined that several Russian backed hacker groups attempted (and assumedly failed) to steal data on the ongoing development of the COVID vaccine. Russia, unsurprisingly, has denied these claims.
Fortunately, while scammers and rumors were doing their rounds, there were also some actual scientists getting to work on finding a reliable solution to the seemingly endless spread of the disease.
From a crisis situation, there are certainly positives to be acknowledged. The first real usage of the vaccine on any large scale was in China where it was first given exclusively for limited use in the military and high-risk occupations, shortly followed by Russia approving its own variant of the vaccine.
Not too long after the UK authorized the Pfizer/AstraZeneca version of the vaccine, becoming the first country in the West to do so. Despite variants of the vaccine there are still more advancements being made as far as methods of delivery go. In fact, it is possible that by the end of the year that we may have the Pfizer available in pill form.
Roll out of the vaccine has been incredibly effective in many nations including the US, and numbers of cases in many countries are in decline. New Zealand for instance has shown the way to establishing a safe society where life can carry on, (hopefully) just as it was before. We can all hope that the rest of the world can follow suit.
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