It’s amazing that we have a safe COVID vaccine already

This interesting story about Pfizer’s development of the first COVID-19 vaccine to get FDA approval reminds is what a historic achievement it is:

Pfizer couldn’t meet every target set by its chief executive. Mr. Bourla wanted the vaccine done by October and as many as 100 million doses by year’s close, enough for 50 million people. Instead about half that will be produced.

Yet the company, which has spent more than $2 billion on the effort, achieved more, faster, than outside experts and even its employees thought possible. In a series of interviews over more than seven months, senior Pfizer executives and other managers shed new light on how the vaccine project took shape.

Early in the pandemic, U.S. health officials cautioned the first vaccines wouldn’t be ready until 2021. Pfizer’s vaccine researchers initially forecast the middle of next year at the earliest.

Previously, the quickest vaccine development program was the four years it took to make the mumps vaccine, licensed in 1967. After getting Mr. Bourla’s go-ahead, Pfizer researchers figured they could shorten the timeline to a year, give or take.

The wait between now and the middle of next year when vaccine(s) will be available to much of the general public and we can start moving toward something like normalcy is already agonizing. I don’t even want to imagine how bad it would be to wait another year before a rollout could even begin, let alone 3.