VACCINATION HAS COME a long way since physician Edward Jenner used pus from an infected blister to create the first vaccine against smallpox in 1796. Even so, vaccines have almost always used a part of a pathogen itself—until COVID-19 brought an emerging technology into the spotlight. Now, some experts predict the tech will lead to new vaccines against viruses from seasonal influenza to HIV. The technology is based off messenger RNA, a molecule that carries genetic code; the two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S. rely on it. Created separately by Moderna and a collaboration between Pfizer and BioNTech, both vaccines were developed in mere days and both were shown to be highly protective in clinical trials. (Find out more about how mRNA vaccines work.) Some experts see mRNA vaccines as the key to faster or more effective vaccine programs, tackling multiple viruses with a single shot or providing protection against difficult diseases. “The technology has been proven to be safe and effective, and everybody on planet Earth knows it, except for the anti-vaxxers,” says Derrick Rossi, a biologist and biotech entrepreneur who co-founded Moderna and has since left the company. “But I drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago.” In January, Moderna pledged new programs to develop mRNA vaccines against Nipah virus, HIV, and influenza, adding to its vaccine pipeline that already included more than 20 mRNA efforts. Pfizer is also working on additional mRNA-based vaccines, including one for seasonal influenza, says Phil Dormitzer, the company’s chief scientific officer and vice president of viral vaccines. Dozens of other manufacturers and labs around the world are working on similar efforts.
John Mahalis of Philadelphia was two and a half months from his pension’s vesting when he learned that he would be permanently laid off from his job as a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The news was a gut punch; Mr. Mahalis said it would leave him less able to financially weather retirement. “It came out of the blue,” said Mr. Mahalis, 65. He had worked for the turnpike for five years after 20 years of unemployment due to an injury he sustained as a dockworker. He had loved the work, especially interacting with customers, and earned good money: By taking as much overtime as he could get, he made about $53,000 a year, along with benefits. “It was the best thing I ever did,” he said. “I felt like a man again.” The job evaporated overnight when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, decided in June to move up its plan to lay off nearly 500 toll workers and replace them with electronic tolling. Dismissals planned for early 2022 instead went into effect immediately, a move that the commission said would help the system financially accommodate weaker traffic during the economic downturn. The United States may be witnessing the bleeding edge of a labor force shuffle that often occurs during recessions: Employers who have been forced to cut workers turn to existing or new technology to carry on with less labor. But this time the shift could be magnified by a wave of forced layoffs at the start of the pandemic and by the fact that demand in some cases came back before employees safely could.
THE BIG IDEA that might save the world from the next catastrophic pandemic isn’t totally buried in the Biden administration’s Covid-19 strategy, but it isn’t exactly above the fold, either. After a flick in the Executive Summary, you’ll have to scroll quite a ways down—to page 115 of the 200-page plan—to find it: “To improve the United States’ preparedness, the Administration will work to secure funding and Congressional support to establish an integrated, National Center for Epidemic Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics to modernize global early warning and trigger systems to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats.” That’s it—federal PreCrime for pandemics. Precognitive epidemiology. Make up whatever sci-fi words for it you want; the fact is, one thing the Covid-19 pandemic proved is that pandemics can happen, and certainly will again. Building a place to develop the sophisticated models and simulations that can give a hint of when and where an outbreak will hit, and give guidance on how to stop it … well, that sounds like a pretty good idea. That notion has been kicking around in wonk circles since the years after the anthrax attacks of 2001, and it comes back up with every big disease outbreak. Two longtime advocates, epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Dylan George, a vice president at the intelligence agency-affiliated venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, laid it out most recently and in more detail in an article in Foreign Affairs. Think of it, they say, like a National Weather Service, but for predicting and studying pandemics and disease outbreaks rather than hurricanes and tornadoes. It’d combine data gathering capabilities with a centralized approach to the kinds of epidemiological and statistical models that featured so heavily in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
