How Pharmaceutical Innovation Helped Save Our World

ABSTRACT

By New Year's Day 2021, millions of Americans had received the vaccine, including frontline physicians and health care providers and nursing home patients, our most vulnerable citizens. [...]there are more than 60 vaccines undergoing clinical trial at the moment, including 20 in phase 3 trials. · This was the fastest vaccine development program in history, and it's not even close. [...]the COVID-19 pandemic, the fastest development timeline was 4 years, for the mumps vaccine. · Many government systems moved quickly to lessen the burden of onerous regulations and provide funding so that vaccines could be developed quickly but with rigorous standards. Perhaps it should be a lesson to all of us that regulation and innovation can be calibrated more effectively during "normal" times as industry races to develop new therapies for other epidemics-cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more.