When the large scale history of the 2020 pandemic is written the key factor for success will turn out to be how well individual societies mobilized their human capital, not how ruthlessly they shut it down.
If NDV-HXP-S proves safe and effective, flu vaccine manufacturers could potentially produce well over a billion doses of it a year. Low- and middle-income countries currently struggling to obtain vaccines from wealthier countries may be able to make NDV-HXP-S for themselves or acquire it at low cost from neighbors.
“That’s staggering — it would be a game-changer,” said Andrea Taylor, assistant director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.
But above all it will prove to be a saga of self learning, the process of finding from among innumerable dead ends the one unsuspected pathway to a solution. It is the willingness to fail, to consider outrageous possibilities and the ability to take risks that lies at the heart of man’s ability to survive.
There is a political temptation in the face of unknown dangers for bureaucrats to promise safety they cannot offer; to speak with assurance about the unpredictable. And while this may calm the media with the facsimile of authority, it does nothing to fix things for very little fundamental progress will come from them.
It is those who accept they do not know who will find out; those who knock that will be answered. It is those who dare that will win. Some people mentally skip this step.
It is finding the formula that’s hard. Any politician can then give it away for free.