Let's just pretend that didn't happen.

Today is the anniversary of the first case of the novel coronavirus reported in Winnipeg. We all knew at the time that we were probably going to end up in lock-down at some point, and that happened a few weeks later. I never imagined at the time that within a year, I'd be about a month away from being in the next demographic to receive a working vaccine against the virus that was rapidly bringing the world to its knees. This thing went from "we are years away from a potential vaccine" to "hold out your arm" in a head-spinningly short span of time. 

There are a couple of things at play in the fast turn-around. First, the technology for producing a vaccine has improved dramatically in recent years. Labs don't even need access to the virus any more to work on an vaccine, they just need to go on the internet and download a copy of its genome. Another thing is that when they talk about taking four years to develop a vaccine, at least three of those are spent in building proposals and counter-proposals, requesting funding, and all of the preliminary administrative work that usually happens before they even start doing basic science.

On another note, 2020 feels like it flew by in a blur. When it was happening, the year dragged, and I remember people joking at the end of March that, "The year of March is finally over, now begins the full year of April..."

There is an interesting brain property where boring things don't form lasting memories. When they are happening, they feel like they are going on forever, but in retrospect they feel like a blip. It's the reason why an 8-hour delay at an airport feels like half a lifetime, and then the rest of the vacation feels like it flew by. Then, when you are looking back, the airport barely registers as a memory compared to the rest of the trip. Our brains store the entire time at the airport as a single event, which makes it feel much shorter after.

2020 was the equivalent of spending an entire year in an airport lounge. It was long, and boring, and not worth storing.

Let's just pretend that didn't happen.

Today is the anniversary of the first case of the novel coronavirus reported in Winnipeg. We all knew at the time that we were probably going to end up in lock-down at some point, and that happened a few weeks later. I never imagined at the time that within a year, I'd be about a month away from being in the next demographic to receive a working vaccine against the virus that was rapidly bringing the world to its knees. This thing went from "we are years away from a potential vaccine" to "hold out your arm" in a head-spinningly short span of time.

There are a couple of things at play in the fast turn-around. First, the technology for producing a vaccine has improved dramatically in recent years. Labs don't even need access to the virus any more to work on an vaccine, they just need to go on the internet and download a copy of its genome. Another thing is that when they talk about taking four years to develop a vaccine, at least three of those are spent in building proposals and counter-proposals, requesting funding, and all of the preliminary administrative work that usually happens before they even start doing basic science.

On another note, 2020 feels like it flew by in a blur. When it was happening, the year dragged, and I remember people joking at the end of March that, "The year of March is finally over, now begins the full year of April..."

There is an interesting brain property where boring things don't form lasting memories. When they are happening, they feel like they are going on forever, but in retrospect they feel like a blip. It's the reason why an 8-hour delay at an airport feels like half a lifetime, and then the rest of the vacation feels like it flew by. Then, when you are looking back, the airport barely registers as a memory compared to the rest of the trip. Our brains store the entire time at the airport as a single event, which makes it feel much shorter after.

2020 was the equivalent of spending an entire year in an airport lounge. It was long, and boring, and not worth storing.