“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” Wayne Koff, President and CEO of the Human Vaccines Project, an organization that promotes vaccine development, said. “It is just that the tunnel is far longer than we assumed.”Illustration by pumpyvector / Shutterstock
After I got my second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a wave of euphoria infused me along with the modified messenger RNA. Many friends describe the same feeling. This is the end of the pandemic for me. Life returns to normal.
But then my usual, pessimistic view of life returned along with an examination of the evidence. There is no question the development of the vaccines is a monumental achievement of science. Nor can anyone doubt that I and the rest of the 14 percent of adult Americans who are fully vaccinated are far better off than if the vaccines came later or not at all. But for now, here is what I can say for sure: It is unlikely that for the next six months I will get severely sick or die from the disease