1434 17 DECEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6574 science.org SCIENCEW
hen Science crowned the de-
velopment of effective SARS-
CoV-2 vaccines the scientific
Breakthrough of the Year in
December 2020, it was a mo-
ment of celebration. “This
breakthrough is a triumph
for all of science,” Editor-in-
Chief Holden Thorp wrote in
an editorial. “There will be plenty of time
for an exegesis of what went wrong. But for
now, what went right is far more important.”
One year later, what went right andwhat went wrong with COVID-19 vaccines
cannot be so neatly divided.
The vaccines were developed at aston-
ishing speed, and their efficacy in large-
scale clinical trials—95% protection from
symptomatic illness for the messenger
RNA vaccines—surpassed most scientists’
dreams. But once they entered the real
world, things got messy. The production
and distribution of billions of shots posed
huge logistical obstacles. The stellar pro-tection began to wane. The virus proved
highly adaptable, with new variants appear-
ing in quick succession. And the shining sci-
entific triumph entered the murkier realm
of politics and patent rules, commerce and
conspiracy theories. The result has been a
muddle—half triumph, half tragedy.
More than 8 billion shots have now been
given worldwide—easily enough to fully
vaccinate everyone on most priority lists:
people who are over age 60, work in health
care, or suffer from underlying conditions
that can worsen COVID-19. That is not ILLUSTRATION: ADAM SIMPSON/HEART AGENCYBy total doses delivered, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was a
spectacular success. By other measures, it went tragically awry
By Kai Kupferschmidt