In an article in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Rino Rappuoli describes vaccines as “a safety belt and life insurance for humankind.” Although there have been skeptics since the first smallpox vaccine in the early 18^th century, it’s hard to deny the impact that vaccinations have had in the past and will continue to make around the world.

Development was only the first step

As soon as the scale and seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear in early 2020, talk began to focus on the challenges of developing vaccines. The past year has seen an unprecedented effort to develop and deploy safe and effective vaccines to control a virus that has now claimed 2.5 million lives worldwide — and more than 500,000 in the U.S. alone.