Do you recall the banner headlines of 2020 about the mapping of the human genome? Not really? You are not alone. Humanity may have been excited by the prospects, but outside of the medical and scientific community, it was difficult to assess what applications the scientific breakthrough would produce.
Twenty years later, the mapping of the genetic sequence is what enables the rapid development of Covid-19 battling vaccines. It’s that development that can ease the fears that the approval process was “too fast” as many have claimed. Most of the vaccines that are distributed now were developed prior to the year 2000. Since there was no critical urgency regarding vaccines developed later, their development was stretched out over a long period of time. Now, all the stars have aligned— an urgent global problem, science that had made all the required advancements and the allocation of nearly limitless resources.