Sarah Zhang

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. With the FDA’s emergency authorization of the first COVID-19 vaccine imminent, the biggest and most complex vaccination campaign in the nation’s history is gearing into action. Planes are ferrying vaccines around the country, hospitals are readying ultracold freezers, and the very first people outside of clinical trials will soon get shots in their arms.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. For all that scientists have done to tame the biological world, there are still things that lie outside the realm of human knowledge. The coronavirus was one such alarming reminder, when it emerged with murky origins in late 2019 and found naive, unwitting hosts in the human body.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. In the end, there was no October surprise. Donald Trump spent months declaring that a COVID-19 vaccine was imminent, a gambit that failed to pressure the FDA into an approval before Election Day but did succeed, nevertheless, in eroding the American public’s confidence in a vaccine.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. During the first COVID-19 surge of the spring, the mantra was “Flatten the curve”—to buy time, using every tool available.Seven months later, it’s possible to measure what that time has bought: The death rate for COVID-19 has fallen dramatically.

Before COVID-19 upended our lives, clinical vaccine trials typically made news only when they were done—when scientists could definitively say, Yes, this one works or No, it doesn’t.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. On the day that a COVID-19 vaccine is approved, a vast logistics operation will need to awaken. Millions of doses must travel hundreds of miles from manufacturers to hospitals, doctor’s offices, and pharmacies, which in turn must store, track, and eventually get the vaccines to people all across the country.