Let’s make it a hat trick. Following the good news from Pfizer and Moderna, we now have more positive vaccine news to report; this time from the partnership between AstraZeneca and Oxford. Using certain dosing strategies, the latest entrant into the vaccine races has hit effective rates as high as 90%. The Oxford vaccine uses more traditional methods, is cheaper, will be sold at nonprofit rates, and importantly, does not need to be transported at extremely low temps. Sarah Gilbert, the leader of the Oxford team: “We need to be able to make a lot of vaccine for the world quickly, and it’s best if we can do it with different technologies so that if one technology runs into a roadblock, then we’ve got alternatives, we’ve got diversity. Diversity is going to be good here, but also in terms of manufacturing, we don’t want to run out of raw materials.” We’re living a political nightmare. We’re also living a series of scientific miracles. Sit tight. Listen to the experts. There is light at the end of the tunnel and the tunnel isn’t that long. Just don’t take a detour to a Thanksgiving superspreader event.

+ “Although relatively easy and quick to produce compared to traditional vaccine-making, no mRNA vaccine or drug has ever won approval.” Stat with a very interesting look at the long rise of a medical breakthrough. The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race.