Pfizer and Moderna are likely to be the first companies to see their respective vaccines authorized in the United States, possibly before the end of 2020. Though their journeys to a COVID-19 vaccine have been eerily similar, the companies themselves could not be more different. Pfizer is a multinational pharmaceutical giant, while Moderna is a small biotechnology company that has never brought a drug to the market. Yet when the COVID-19 pandemic began, both companies bet big on a brand-new vaccine technology called mRNA. Moderna had been working on the technology for years, while Pfizer partnered with a smaller German biotechnology company BioNTech for its mRNA research.
They were two young Jewish men who grew up just a few years apart in the New York area during the Great Depression, and though they were both drawn to the study of medicine and did not know each other at the time, their names would, years later, be linked in a heroic struggle that played out on the front pages of newspapers around the world. In the end, both Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk could rightfully claim credit for one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments—the near-eradication of polio in the 20th century. And yet debate still echoes over whose method is best suited for the mass vaccination needed to finish the job: Salk’s injected, dead-virus vaccine or Sabin’s oral, live-virus version.
When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6, 2021 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version. Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.
Jeff Bezos followed up his 11-minute flight to the edge of space with an extended press appearance in which he announced the gift of $100 million each to CNN political contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres. “They can give all to their own charity or they can share their wealth. It’s all up to them,” Bezos said. “Sometimes dreams come true,” Jones said, adding that “the headlines around the world should be, anything is possible if you believe.” Andres, who started a non profit to feed those affected by natural disasters, said, “This award itself cannot feed the world on its own, but this is the start of a new chapter for us.” Anderson Cooper, who has been anchoring CNN’s coverage of the flight of the Blue Origin spacecraft, said “quite a surprise. Obviously none of us knew anything about it.”
