Originally Posted by
sonatine
it took 5 days from the first non-travel related infection reports to map this virus' entire genome and thats honestly blowing my fucking mind right now.
also weirdly in large part that quantum leap in tech was created by covid.
The ultimate success of the mRNA vaccines (still up in the air, to be honest) will also have a lot of impact where mRNA technology goes over the next 2 decades.
The technology has been around, but somewhat ignored. It was more relegated to the land of cute science projectdom, where researchers got together and said "what if", but we got no practical applications out of it.
Along came COVID, and not only was a practical application developed for mRNA, but it was done in record time. At first it seemed to be a success beyond our wildest dreams, vastly outperforming old school vaccines such as the one for flu, and also outperforming non-mRNA COVID vaccines.
Unfortunately, the "wearing off" effect is concerning, as is the fact that it seems natural immunity is superior.
The long term safety profile of mRNA vaccines isn't known, either, and it won't be known until we get to the actual long term. So far it's looking pretty good (a year later, we aren't seeing a significant number of deaths or major health problems attributed to it), but that can change as we get farther out and can see things better.
There has been talk that mRNA technology can eventually cure cancer and change medicine as we know it. Perhaps in 2050, people will look back at pre-mRNA medicine and scoff at those primitive days, the same way we look down upon pre-antibiotics medicine of the early 20th century. It's also possible that mRNA will take awhile to ever get going, especially if the vaccines are ultimately judged as a fail.
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