Vaccine Development.

COVID tests? Ohhh yeah. But smallpox? Thanks to vaccines, you haven’t had to worry about that one since 1977. Paul Offit: The purpose of vaccines is to induce the immunity that is a consequence of natural infection without having to suffer the price of natural infection. Historically, that price was often death. Paul: When my parents were children in the 1920s, their parents, my grandparents, were scared of diphtheria, which killed 15,000 children a year. And they were scared of pertussis, or whooping cough, which would kill 8,000 children a year. Vaccines changed all that. Paul: My parents weren’t scared of diphtheria and they weren’t scared of pertussis because we had a diphtheria and pertussis vaccine by then. But they were scared of polio because polio would paralyze 30,000 children a year and kill 1,800. They were scared of mumps.

They were scared of measles. Me and my wife aren’t scared of any of those diseases.

Not only have we largely, I think, eliminated these diseases and their impact, we’ve eliminated the memory of these diseases. And as a consequence, people focus much more now on issues of vaccine safety, real or imagined, than they ever did before. Well, are vaccines safe? How are they made? All vaccines are designed with a component to trigger an immune response. They undergo rigorous testing to determine dosing and effectiveness, usually starting on animals. Paul: One famous researcher in Philadelphia says, “Mice lie, and monkeys exaggerate.” So you have to go actually into people. Human trials are conducted in three phases, expanding the number of participants each time. After a successful study, the vaccine is submitted to an organization like the FDA for approval. After it’s approved, a vaccine can be recommended for public use. Globally, WHO—the World Health Organization—plays a critical role in the process. Paul Offit: Viruses and bacteria don’t recognize international boundaries, and what can happen in one place can happen in another. This virus that emerged, SARS-CoV-2, in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 proceeded to sweep across the world, kill about nine million people.
And that’s where the World Health Organization comes in to sort of recognize that and declare, as they did very quickly, a pandemic. Vaccines have helped stop deadly diseases like smallpox, and they helped the world fight back against COVID. With research and global teamwork—science and solidarity—these efforts will continue to save lives.