As we’re entering the new year, the WHO reports the world count of COVID-19 cases of almost 100 million, and the number of deaths of more than 2 million. With most countries around the world witnessing economic recession, the IMF estimates that the global economy shrunk by 4.4% in 2020, which is the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Needless to say, the pandemic and the subsequent measures governments had to take have led to enormous shocks for our healthcare systems, economies and societies. The virus not only kills people, but widens social inequality, spreads poverty, frustration and damages trust between us.
There are only three potential scenarios for 2021:
A quick vaccination of the majority of citizens = a significant elimination of the coronavirus
A quick spread of the virus and its new variants among the people = a lot of lost lives. No-one wants this.
A magical weakening of the virus. We all know how often magic happens.
This is why scientists around the world put all of their efforts into the development and verification of vaccines with a particular focus on their safety. While vaccine development usually takes years, the speedy rollout of effective COVID-19 vaccines has been unprecedented. In less than a year, the FDA has granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to two COVID-19 vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, and several more vaccines are expected to follow behind.
The rapid process of vaccine development was due to a combination of funding, high public interest and global cooperation. At the same time, scientists were able to leverage on previous research of SARS and MERS viruses and were able to develop and test hundreds of vaccines simultaneously. In addition, a newer vaccine technology has made the development process much quicker. While vaccine development typically requires the production of a vast amount of virus, mRNA vaccines and other new technologies don’t. Rather, these new classes of vaccines rely on material that can be synthesized in a laboratory, so there’s no virus needed.
Despite the unusually quick process of vaccine development and approval, vaccines have had excellent results from their clinical testing. Regardless of how rapidly a new vaccine has been developed, the gold standard test — the randomized, placebo-controlled phase III clinical trial — is always required by the FDA for considering approval of any new vaccine.
With COVID-19 vaccines’ safety and effectiveness assured, more than 65 million people around the world have been vaccinated (as of January 24, 2021). However, the process of getting vaccination shots has been off to a slow start in many countries, including the US and the EU. One country which has outpaced many others in vaccination rollout is Israel, due to its small population and geography, and the efficiency of its highly digitized health care system. However, the country has also been criticized, with reports that millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have not been given access to the jabs.
As new, more infectious variants of the coronavirus are spreading worldwide, it remains unclear how well do the existing vaccines work against these strains. Ramping up the vaccination process should therefore become an urgent priority for governments across the world.
There are many people who worry about the potential side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination. However, other than some small side effects such as headache, muscle pain and erythema which disappear in a matter of days, only a couple of anaphylactic allergic reactions have been observed. The fact that side effects only appear once in a million cases reinforces the argument for the safety of the vaccines even further. To put it into context – one in a million is a similar chance to being struck by lightning. Even the risk of being hit by a car during our lifetime is higher.
We have to admit that we don’t know much about the long-term side effects. However, there is no direct evidence of the role of vaccines in the development of autoimmunity neurological diseases – in other words, the long-term side effects. If history were to teach us lessons – if we ignored the results of clinical testing of vaccines against whooping cough (also known as pertussis) in the past, many of us would not be here today.
It is important to keep in mind that vaccination is not only about protecting our own health, but also about social cohesion, fellowship and solidarity with those who – for example due to their medical condition – cannot be vaccinated.
Governments need to do everything in their power to ensure a fair and speedy vaccine supply and distribution for their populations. These efforts must go hand in hand with massive awareness campaigns to fight the spread of vaccine-related conspiracies in the online space. Only then can we start rebuilding the world after COVID-19. Vaccination is the best weapon we have today, and if we want our lives back, we should use it to win our battle against the virus as soon as possible.