Following the Science of COVID-19

For all that has happened over the last year, the pace at which science (and more specifically, biomedical science) has progressed has been awe inducing.

• We went from having no tests to genome sequences shared with scientists and labs across the world to countries before the virus reached their shores.
• We watched as epidemiologists (and other experts) figured out how the spread occurs, and what can be done to contain it.
• We have followed doctors as they discovered various details about COVID-19, its effect on people, and found treatments that work and ones that don’t.
• In less than a year since WHO characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic, we have 6+ different vaccines in circulation and being shot in people’s arms! The previous fastest? 4 years.

It wasn’t always right, it wasn’t always simple. But it was always backed in data, observations and rigor. It has been a humbling, perseverance-filled, ground-breaking year for science. And this article highlights just how the global scientific community came together, measured as a factor of publications about COVID-19 in various journals. Fascinating.

The challenges that we need science to help overcome over this lifetime are far from over. But the progress that I’ve seen as a bystander over the last year fills me with hope for what’s to come.