Vaccination
|
The big difference between this pandemic and the Spanish Influenza has been effective vaccination. In 1931 German Physicists, Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll, developed the first electron microscope, at the University of Berlin, and, in 1935, a virion was photographed for the first time. Yet, it was not until 1955 that the full structure of the tobacco mosaic virus was first elucidated, by the ground-breaking x-ray crystallographer, Rosalind Franklin, who's work also helped reveal the double helix structure of DNA. From that time on, cell-biology and bio-technology moved forward in leaps and bounds. So that in 2020 several dozen independent teams around the world set to work. The process of highly specific vaccine development, based on a detailed molecular map of the virus, that two decades ago took decades to accomplish, was foreshortened to a few months. Thus, ten, tested, safe and efficacious, vaccines against the virus, employing a range of technologies, have already been deployed in many countries. And many of these teams are continuing to work against the rise of the inevitable virus variants: COVID-19 vaccines, and the technologies employed, as at January 2022
* Available in Australia |
If you know little of biology, but are interested to know more, you might choose to read: 'The Chemistry of Life' on this website. It's a simplified version, originally written for my children, who have long outgrown it - now it's for the grandchildren.