Vaccine

I've been following the momentous news today about the first people who are getting the Pfizer covid vaccine. They are doctors and nurses who have put their lives on the line to help keep very sick people alive this year. These health care workers not only need to be protected from the virus so they can continue their work, but also are setting an example to others that the vaccine can be trusted.

One of the talking heads said that while we are eternally grateful to the medical staff that are under tremendous pressure now, we should also give thanks to the scientists who worked tirelessly all year to deliver a safe and effective vaccine -several of them, eventually. That struck home to me, because I know one of those scientists.

I may have told you that I had a young man live in my home this summer. He was an international student who graduated along with my daughters, summa cum laude, with a triple major in biochemistry, math, and physics. He had a job lined up in California, but the federal work permit that he was told would take two weeks actually took three months to arrive. The job offer was eventually withdrawn. So he stayed at my house, mowed my lawn, and cooked wonderfully spicy foods. When the permit came through, he had another job within days, at a small biotech firm in Cambridge that was doing contract work for a pharma working on the development and testing of a covid vaccine. Big science consists of a lot of components, and he worked on one those necessary components.

Yesterday, he called out of the blue to see how I was doing. He asked about my mother, and said he was doing well and making friends in the big city. We also talked about the vaccine rollout, and I told him how proud I was of the work he did. He gave me the impression that he was proud, too, but I could tell I was probably the first person outside the industry to recognize that. He may be just a technician for now, but he had a hand in possibly saving the world. All those folks deserve our eternal thanks for their years of effort in learning what they needed to know to get this job done. May God bless them all.