Think about how Covid might have been different if, say, 50 percent of the worlds urban population had switched into this mode on Feb. 1, 2020. Could this have stopped the virus in its tracks? Perhaps not. But it might have resulted in a global outbreak that looked more like South Koreas experience, or San Franciscos, with death rates a tiny fraction of what they ultimately proved to be.
We are learning from Covid in a more obvious way as well: through the lens of science. After the Great Influenza, it took 13 years thanks to a young virologist named Richard Edwin Shope, who noticed veterinary reports about an unusual outbreak of swine flu among pigs in fall 1918 to prove that the pandemic had been caused by a virus at all. The contrast with Covid could not be more extreme: We isolated the SARS-CoV-2 virus about 20 days after the outbreak was first reported. Just over a week later, its genome had been sequenced and shared around the world, and the blueprint for what would become the mRNA vaccines (the ones manufactured, ultimately, by Pfizer and Moderna) was essentially complete.
Its important to remember that mRNA vaccines were a promising, if unproven, line of inquiry for years before the pandemic hit; no one could say for sure that they even worked. But now BioNTech has announced that its ramping up development of a malaria vaccine using messenger RNA as the delivery mechanism, and Moderna and partners announced that theyre beginning trials of two mRNA candidate vaccines against H.I.V. Malaria kills roughly 400,000 people a year, H.I.V. nearly a million, and both diseases disproportionately affect the young. If the successful mass rollout of the Covid vaccines winds up accelerating the timeline for these other vaccines, the impact on human life will be enormous.
And just as the Great Influenza slowly nudged scientists toward the development of flu shots, which finally became commonplace in the 1940s, the Covid crisis will redirect vast sums of research dollars toward the development of universal vaccines to protect against all variants of both influenza and coronavirus. Given the relentless, year-in-and-year-out disease burden of flu around the world, a vaccine that reduced its virulence by an order of magnitude would be a life saver of historic proportions.
What about the more subtle psychological legacy of Covid? How will it change the way we perceive the world and its risks when the pandemic finally subsides? I have a memory from May of this year, taking my 17-year-old son to the Javits Center in Manhattan for his first vaccine, followed by a shopping trip to pick out a tie for his (masked, outdoor) senior prom. At some point waiting in line, I made a halfhearted joke about how we were embarking on the classic father-son ritual of heading out to the mass vaccination site to protect him from the plague. I meant it ironically, but the truth is that for my sons generation, proms and plagues will be part of the rituals of growing up.
There is a loss of innocence in that, but also a hard-earned realism: the knowledge that rare high-risk events like pandemics are not just theoretically possible but likely, in an increasingly urban and interconnected world of nearly eight billion people. As a parent, you want to protect your children from unnecessary anxieties, but not when the threat in question is a real one. My sons generation will forever take pandemics as a basic fact of life, and that assumption, painful as it is, will protect him when the next threat emerges. But maybe, if the science unleashed by this pandemic lives up to its promise, his children or perhaps his grandchildren could inherit a world where plagues are a thing of the past.
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Could Covid Lead to Progress? - The New York Times
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- Nioh Review-in-Progress: FromSoftware's Formula Evolved - Shacknews - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Deutsche Bundesbank Cites Progress With Blockchain-Based Settlement - CryptoCoinsNews - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- IMF: Greece's debts are still unsustainable despite progress - The Seattle Times - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Think Progress Editor Mocks Audi for Equal Pay Super Bowl Ad - Breitbart News - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Progress apparent on defense - Pittsburgh Steelers - Steelers.com - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
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- Can US disrupter-in-chief trigger some progress? - Jerusalem Post Israel News - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- The Cost of Progress - Slate Magazine - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Cavaliers' pitching rotation a work in progress | Cavalier Insider ... - The Daily Progress - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
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- Cries of 'dictator' show Pope Francis is making progress - Crux: Covering all things Catholic - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Officials: City is making progress in effort to address opioid crisis - The Union Leader - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- IN OUR VIEW: Work Ready in Progress for Carter - The Independent - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- BP's Earnings Keep Showing Progress, Even if the Headline Results Don't Say So - Motley Fool - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Women's Progress in the Boardroom Took a Hit in 2016 - Inc.com - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Blight Elimination Progress, Uplifting - MyWabashValley - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
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- Through the looking glass: Tower view showcases progress on Amazon's unique biospheres - GeekWire - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Britney Spears Says Niece Maddie Is 'Making Progress' After ATV Accident: 'Let's All Keep Praying' - PEOPLE.com - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
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- 'Paper boys' were the lifeblood of The Daily Progress - The Daily Progress - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
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- ATA says states' telemedicine progress a mixed bag ... - FierceHealthcare - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Seltzer's Notebook | Colangelo Encouraged by Sixers' Progress - Sixers.com - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- The Trump administration can't entirely roll back progress on climate change here's why - Washington Post - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
- Colts position review: OL showed legit progress, but work remains - Indianapolis Star - February 10th, 2017 [February 10th, 2017]
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- Louisville City notes: McCabe making progress - The Courier-Journal - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Jeremy Lin: Progress but no timetable - NetsDaily - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Marginal progress for Turkish-backed forces in north Syria - LA Daily News - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
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- Pistons' Johnson making halting but definite progress - The Detroit News - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
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- The Democrats' Strategy: Hindering Progress For Partisan Politics - Daily Caller - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
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- Gender Progress in Ballet - Huffington Post - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Foyt pleased with progress, regrets lack of time - Motorsport.com, Edition: Global - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Progress Made, but Threat Lingers at California's Oroville Dam - Wall Street Journal - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Adele, Beyonc, and the Grammys' Fear of Progress - The Atlantic - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- North Korea Claims Progress on Long-Range Goal With Missile Test - New York Times - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- How Travel Bans Can Impede America's Progress - Forbes - Forbes - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Jeff Sessions' appointment threatens decades of civil rights progress - The Hill (blog) - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- Ionis Earns $75M Milestone from Bayer for Progress of Antisense Drug Program - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (press release) - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
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- City, UF sign partnership for progress - Gainesville Sun - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
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- 5G progress at Ericsson could help enterprises work worldwide - Computerworld - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
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- Halo Wars 2 Review in Progress - IGN - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- CUGNON: Forward progress - Yale Daily News (blog) - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
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- Committee updates Legislature on precinct consolidation progress - Chicago Tribune - February 18th, 2017 [February 18th, 2017]