On Monday morning, Pfizer announced that a vaccine it developed with a German company called BioNTech has initially proved more than 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 in human trials. While further testing is ongoing and the logistical task of distributing a vaccine will be enormous, independent medical experts say the company may have made a significant step toward addressing the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
The vaccine announcement is even more auspicious when taken in tandem with this weekend’s news that Joe Biden will defeat Donald Trump in the Electoral College to become the next president. While we do not make partisan endorsements here at Slate, it is simply an objective fact that Biden’s approach to controlling the pandemic—there is already a Biden advisory board addressing “testing, vaccine distribution, therapeutics, guidance for schools to open, and coordination with the states,” and the administration’s likely chief of staff, Ron Klain, was effective as “Ebola czar” under Obama—has a higher likelihood of saving lives than what Trump would have done (a mix of “nothing” and belatedly assigning vaccine distribution responsibilities to a right-wing Twitter account called @ShitLib1488).
Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris actually met with their advisory board Monday morning. Someone who works in government listening to a doctor! Imagine it! Behold it!
There’s also an ongoing worldwide stock market surge that observers are attributing to Pfizer and BioNTech’s announcement and the expectation that the Biden administration will create a more stable global economic environment. Great!
For those who enjoy their good news with a splash of embarrassing things happening to unsympathetic people, meanwhile, there is the ongoing saga of the Trump campaign “voter fraud” press conference that was seemingly held by accident on Saturday at “Four Seasons Total Landscaping,” a Philadelphia business that is next to a sex-toy store and across the street from a crematorium, instead of the Four Seasons hotel. Monday’s development in that story is that one of the people whom Rudy Giuliani introduced at the press conference as an alleged witness to Philadelphia vote-counting irregularities turns out to be a convicted sex offender who is well known in the area as a frequent nuisance candidate for elected office.
LOL.
For now, for once, it’s all looking up.
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