The speed of development and the magnitude of efficacy of recently developed vaccines directed against SARS-CoV-2 has been truly remarkable. This editorial will not summarize the highly publicized and reviewed information about the design and clinical trial results of these vaccines. Rather, I will speculate about several issues regarding i) considerations of the rollout and implementation of the multiple vaccines, ii) the use of the vaccines in ways different from those used in the registrational phase 3 studies, iii) the future both of SARS-CoV-2 in the human population and of "normal" human life returning after widespread vaccination, and iv) the implications of the success of these SARS-CoV-2 vaccines for vaccine development against other pathogens.

Current efforts toward achieving a cure for HIV are focused on developing strategies to eliminate latently infected CD4+ T cells, which represent the major barrier to virus eradication. Sensitive, precise, and practical assays that can reliably characterize and measure this HIV reservoir and can reliably measure the impact of a candidate treatment strategy are essential. PCR-based procedures for detecting integrated HIV DNA will overestimate the size of the reservoir by detecting replication-incompetent proviruses; however, viral outgrowth assays underestimate the size of the reservoir. Here, we describe the attributes and limitations of current procedures for measuring the HIV reservoir. Characterizing their relative merits will require rigorous evaluation of their performance characteristics (sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility, etc.) and their relationship to the results of clinical studies.

The magnitude of the morbidity and mortality inflicted upon the global population in less than 1 year has driven the inescapable conclusion that the discovery and development of effective antiviral drugs for COVID-19 are urgent and should be prioritized. The antiviral drug discovery programs that emerged for HIV and hepatitis C virus have enabled technology and expertise to accelerate this process for SARS-CoV-2. The description of candidate lead inhibitors for the viral main protease (Mpro) exemplifies this accelerated approach and reminds us of the needs and opportunities for addressing this pandemic.