The vaccine news is great, but Big Pharma is still fooling us

Heroic work went into the development of the coronavirus vaccines. But that does not mean this industry deserves your affection.

A Kenyan schoolgirl walking along a railway line in a Nairobi slum after schools partially reopened in October. Pharmaceutical corporations are largely monopolising access to vaccines, which means that millions in the global south may not get the life-saving shot for months. PHOTO: REUTERS

It's about as near as science gets to a miracle: A coronavirus vaccine has arrived - and the main reason is that mRNA vaccines, a previously untested technology, appear to work better than almost anyone had hoped.

As recently as this summer, many analysts were pushing their predictions for a vaccine into the autumn of 2021, in line with the timeline of traditional treatments. If these new vaccines perform as well in the wild as they have in clinical trials, the world will remember it as a victory perhaps greater than Salk and Sabin against polio. If this new type of vaccine also goes on to work against other viruses, it will mark an epochal advance in vaccinology, closer to the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner.

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