Inside the Covid vaccine fast track.
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By Eve Sneider | 03.18.23
illustration of six vaccine syringes in a row
MARCH 2020: WHEN NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING, AND EVERYTHING CHANGED
This week marks three years just about to the day since large swaths of America plunged into lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic
irrevocably disrupted the rhythms of most people’s lives. Sorry to be the one to remind you! Thinking back on it, that time feels
like a fever dream: scrubbing food packages with Clorox wipes, worrying about the health of loved ones, wondering whether things
would be back to normal by summertime, or if not then, by fall, or perhaps by 2021. I left WIRED’s offices in the World Trade
Center thinking I’d be back in a few weeks and didn’t reenter them for a year and a half. No one seemed to know anything, really,
about anything.
But by mid-March 2020, when New York City and San Francisco, among other places, issued their shelter-in-place orders, a team of
scientists was already well on its way to formulating the first vaccine for fending off SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the very first trial
mRNA jab was administered on March 16, 2020. In those confusing, scary, crisis-ridden early days of the pandemic, writer Brooke
Jarvis followed scientists hard at work at Moderna and the patients who volunteered themselves to help bring about what would be
the fastest vaccine development of all time.
The resulting feature, “The First Shot: Inside the Covid Vaccine Fast Track,” is astonishing to read now. It underscores how much
we owe to the experts who were hard at work before we laypeople had any idea how bad things were going to get, and to the
laypeople among us who received those first shots without entirely knowing what would happen. But Jarvis’ account was also
published on the fast track, that May. When it came out there was still so much we did not know.
How does it feel to read about the spring of 2020 now? What memories does it bring back for you? How did the pandemic alter how
you think about the future, and what it looks like to be prepared without knowing what’s coming next? Let me know in the comments
below the story.
See you next week!
Portrait of Eve Sneider
Eve Sneider, Deputy Ideas Editor
Read The Full Story
Originally published in May 2020.
illustration of six vaccine syringes in a row
The First Shot: Inside the Covid Vaccine Fast Track
The first vaccine candidate entered human trials five days after the pandemic was declared. Behind the scenes at Moderna and an
unprecedented global sprint.
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Times, they are a-changin’
Last week, Classics looked back at Mary H. K. Choi’s 2016 account of how teens socialize online. In response, Choi
herself tweeted, “Omg so much has changed!”
Tell me about your favorite WIRED stories and magazine-related memories, and each week I’ll feature one of you here. Write to me
at
[email protected], and include “CLASSICS” in the subject line. Or, simply join the conversation by posting a comment below
the article.
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