Biomedical science had an astounding, unprecedented year. Two vaccines were developed for a new coronavirus in under 12 months. An entirely new mRNA technology proved sound. Clinicals trials of several therapeutics completed trials and were approved for use with patients. Less impressively, the centerpiece of coronavirus disease control, Covid-19 testing that can be available where people work and live and go to school, an at-home test with no delay in results, became available only in the final weeks of 2020. That it arrived so late in the year, after the US had experienced a per capita rate of testing far lower than most other high-income countries, has been one of the great public health disappointments of the pandemic.
Also lacking a rapid home test, other countries were able to make better use of the medically-supervised, slower, “gold standard” Covid-19 tests than the US. Asian countries had testing machines spread across their nations, and systems to evaluate which locations had excess capacity. With their smaller numbers of infections, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine were successful for disease control, and were culturally acceptable.
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