Good news came out of Pittsburgh on Thursday.
It came in the form of a fingertip-sized innovation with miniature needles made of sugar and virus proteins. It might be the vaccine that protects millions from the novel coronavirus pandemic. And it has been developed at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
That is a bright spot in a storyline that has become dominated by the upward climb of the diagnosed cases and the mounting number of deaths across the country and in Pennsylvania. There were 1,404 new cases reported in the state on Friday: 57 were in Allegheny County, 26 in Westmoreland. Statewide deaths have topped 100 while nationwide there are more than 6,600.
The numbers are suffocating, almost as much as the doors we are stuck behind in quarantine from each other to limit the spread of the disease.
So it is natural to want to grasp the idea of a vaccine in excitement. And it is exciting.
But we can’t forget the difference between vaccine and cure.
A vaccine is something that can be used to stop an epidemic from happening. It does nothing to halt an epidemic that is already underway.
A vaccine could be important in making sure that today’s pandemic is a one-time, historic event — a fault line in our history like the Civil War or September 11, 2001.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease has warned of subsequent waves of infection after the shutdowns are lifted. Those are what a vaccine could help wrangle. Not the symptoms now spreading like the “slow-motion hurricane” described by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Especially when the Pittsburgh Coronavirus Vaccine — PittCoVacc — could be as much as 18 months away, after clinical trials. Other vaccines are in the pipeline and may come up earlier, including one that began clinical trials in Seattle in March, but none is imminent.
The vaccines’ biggest value today is hope. They provide a finish line in the future where coronavirus could be like smallpox or polio — a disease we remember being a problem but something that might be held at bay with a fingertip-sized piece of sugar and science.
