On the recordDecember 3, 2020
the Presiding Officer and I are here, and we have been meeting today in Washington at, really, a groundbreaking moment as we continue this battle for our health, for our economy, and against the virus. What makes this such a critical moment are the developments we have seen in the last 10 days regarding a vaccine. Public health experts around the world have agreed, almost from day one, that the way to really find the end of this pandemic--the ultimate weapon--would be to develop a vaccine that worked. Less than a year ago, which was in January and February of this year, we were hearing that 2 years would set a record for developing a vaccine and that sometimes a vaccine that has been developed on a new disease like this has taken 3 and 5 and even 10 years or more. Yet here we are, less a year from the discovery of COVID-19, with not just one vaccine but two vaccines that have already applied for their use permits. Both vaccines have shown an effectiveness of more than 90 percent, and a third vaccine with a similar response is about to get to the place at which it, too, can apply for use. These are incredible numbers. It wasn't that many months ago that healthcare experts were saying, if we get a vaccine that is effective 50 percent of the time or more, that the government should consider accepting that vaccine and making it available to people, and here we are with a 90 percent effective vaccine.…
Source
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