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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