December 17th – Science magazine announced its top ten scientific breakthroughs in 2020 on the 17th, and “developerate and test much-neededed coronavirus vaccines at record speed” was selected as the number one breakthrough.
After obtaining the genome sequence of COVID-19 in early 2020, researchers in China, the United States, Europe and other places have tried different technological routes to develop vaccines.
Vaccine development usually takes several years, but with the joint efforts of the global scientific community, the coronavirus vaccine has been approved by the end of 2020.
Science magazine commented that the powerful force of cohesion has pushed the coronavirus vaccine from scratch in a short time.
Never before have researchers developed so many experimental vaccines so quickly against “one enemy”, never so many competitors have cooperated so openly and frequently, never so many candidate vaccines have been tested for large-scale efficacy almost simultaneously, and governments, businesses, academia and non-profit organizations have never been here. In such a short time, so much money, manpower and energy have been invested in the same infectious disease.
The magazine’s “annual crash” is also related to the coronavirus epidemic, that is, the spread of rumors and misinformation. Science magazine believes that the rapid spread of rumors related to the coronavirus epidemic has cast a shadow on the scientific fight against the epidemic, and scientists, rather than viruses, have become enemies of some people.
In addition, the strategy of infecting as many people as possible with the novel coronavirus and thus forming a “herd immunity” is also considered dangerously misleading by most epidemiologists.
In addition to the coronavirus vaccine, the other nine scientific breakthroughs this year are: gene editing tool CRISPR’s first clinical cure of hereditary blood diseases, artificial intelligence predicts protein structure, the discovery of special locations of HIV-infected people with HIV for a long time
clearer global warming prediction, and rapid New discoveries of radiostorm sources, ancient cave murals depicting the world’s oldest hunting scene, the realization of room temperature superconductivity, new advances in bird intelligence research, and scientists’ call for attention to racial discrimination.
