Irish Examiner View: Another good reason for us to be joyful

Rapid development of vaccines has been a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

A nurse draws up the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to be administered to a patient.

Just a year ago, when Covid-19 announced its unwelcome presence, very few of us other than those with professional, hands-on experience of what happens when a highly-infectious disease gets a toehold in a cheek-by-jowl population knew what might unfold. Reactions varied from the blasé to those verging on a kind of silent, simmering hysteria.

Yet, just 12 months later science has found a defence and we all, or at least the great majority of us, crave the liberating moment a vaccine will bring. That achievement cannot be underestimated. Neither can the challenge of delivering a vaccine to billions of people. There are bound to be inconsistencies and glitches, the scale of the project and its urgency make that reality all but inevitable.