Editorial: UPMC says covid-19 vaccine will take longer. That's normal.

We need a vaccine for covid-19.

But we need a vaccine that will work. Maybe it would be something that would be done annually like the flu shot, tweaked every year to address new strains. Maybe it would be like a tetanus shot that would work for a certain number of years.

It doesn’t matter. We just need something that will take the coronavirus from the kind of disease that can put the world on pause to the kind of disease that we manage starting with medical precaution, like measles or mumps or whooping cough.

But UPMC doctors who are among the worldwide teams working on such a vaccine are looking at the pages left in the 2020 calendar and saying that is unlikely to come this year.

“This is simply not going to happen,” said Dr. David Nace, chief medical officer of UPMC’s senior communities. “We’re hopeful that we can move as fast as we can, but, unfortunately, before the end of the year is not likely to occur.”

That might seem like bad news, but is it really? Or is that exactly what should be happening? Most vaccines take years to develop safely.

The need for this new immunization for a disease that has paralyzed the world in less than a year is rising at the worst possible time.

In 2019, the World Health Organization put out a list of then-current threats to global health. The list was prescient as it included a global pandemic and emerging pathogens — two things that merged in the coronavirus.

It also included vaccine hesitancy. That is the growing tendency of people in developed countries to be skeptical about vaccines. Diseases like measles, mumps and whooping cough have seen resurgence in places where they had been all but eradicated.

So what will happen when a covid vaccine is released after months and months of social distancing and pandemic precautions? Will it be embraced? Or will it become the subject of more conspiracy theories?

If the vaccine is necessary, it has to be as close to perfect as possible because it will be in the spotlight more than any inoculation since Jonas Salk’s polio shot.

This medical miracle in the making won’t just treat our kids. It won’t be like the annual flu update. It will be a shot in the arm for our communities, our culture and our country. It won’t just put people back on their feet. It will get our economy up and walking around again. More will be asked of this vaccine than any other pharmaceutical in history.

And we need it to be right more than we need it to be right now.