On November 22, the New York Times published a fascinating account of the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine. The Times report included a number of interesting facts, but one really grabbed my attention: It turns out that the Moderna vaccine, which was just shown to be 95 percent effective, was actually developed by the company in just two days in January 2020.
That’s right, they developed the vaccine in two days in January, but then needed to spend the following ten months performing tests in order to meet the FDA’s standards for vaccine safety and efficacy.
During those ten months, 1.3 million people, including a quarter million Americans, have died from the coronavirus.