Less than a year to develop a COVID vaccine — here’s why you shouldn’t be alarmed

Yes, Covid vaccines have been developed very quickly, much faster than usual. No, that doesn’t make them unsafe. What makes the concern so, well, contagious is that it intuitively feels correct. «So next time somebody expresses concern at the astonishing speed the vaccine trials have happened at, point out to them that ten years isn’t a good thing, it’s a bad thing. It’s not ten years because that is safe, it’s ten hard years of battling indifference, commercial imperatives, luck, and red tape.