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Excerpts from:
2021
Heroes of the year
The Miracle Workers
Photographs by Mattia Balsamini for TIME December 13, 2021 7:41 AM EST
No one knows for sure where the virus came from…
Only as the virus emerges from the shadows of these favored havens does it confront its most formidable foe: the scientists quietly awaiting it. How they responded was less mysterious, and certainly less unpredictable, than the virus they targeted. Their medium was light, and the brightness of scientific truth, which they painstakingly pursued in brilliantly lit research labs and “clean rooms” scrubbed of airborne particles—and produced brilliant results.
About a month after the first cluster of patients appeared wheezing in a Wuhan hospital, the entire genome of the responsible coronavirus—30,000 specific nucleotides—had been sorted, identified and posted online.
Two weeks later, designs were already being keyed into machines to create a vaccine that would unlock a world that had not even locked down yet.
Given that speed, it was easy to imagine that a solution to the problem of SARS-CoV-2 was inevitable. After all, things we took to be miracles not long ago have become the stuff of everyday life—routine, apparently effortless…
Except there was nothing inevitable about them. The vaccines that first arrested the spread of COVID-19—and that will almost surely be adjusted to thwart the Omicron variant and future mutations—were never a foregone conclusion. Far from it. They were, after all, produced by human beings, subject to the vagaries of systems and doubt. There were times in their careers when, deep in the work that would ultimately rescue humanity, Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman felt as though the problems they faced were ones they alone cared about solving. But exposing the inner workings of how viruses survive and thrive is what made the COVID-19 vaccines possible.
The four were hardly alone in those efforts: scientists around the world have produced COVID-19 vaccines using a variety of platforms and technologies. Many—like the shots from Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson–Janssen—came from more established methods, modified with impressive speed to fight a new virus. Still, Corbett, Graham, Kariko and Weissman achieved a breakthrough of singular importance, introducing an innovative and highly effective vaccine platform, based on mRNA, that will impact our health and well-being far beyond this pandemic.
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“A renaissance in vaccinology” is what University of Pittsburgh Center for Vaccine Research director Paul Duprex calls the tools crafted by Kariko, Weissman, Graham and Corbett and the many scientists who collaborated with them over the years. They represent a novel path out of this pandemic, but also a new approach to quelling future ones. Already, vaccine makers are testing mRNA-based vaccines against influenza, potentially making them more effective, safer and easier to produce.
Thanks to the scientists leading the groundbreaking development and elegant construction of these COVID-19 vaccines, we now have a list of near-infinite possibilities. The vaccines work with a magnificence that only highlights how far science has come—and how far behind society remains in recognizing and accepting what is now possible. Our communications, our politics, our splintered cultures are still snarled in confusion and skepticism, keeping people from getting the shots. Through the harrowing first winter of COVID-19, scientists gifted humanity with the ultimate prize—a weapon to fight the pandemic. It’s now up to humanity to return the favor.
—-With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Julia -Zorthian •
https://time.com/heroes-of-the-year-2021-vaccine-scientists/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=person-of-the-year&utm_term=_&linkId=144099298
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