In the past, vaccines have taken ten to fifteen years to develop. The quickest any vaccine had been developed previously was the four years it took to create the mumps vaccine. Due to work that had already been done on other viruses in the past, the COVID-19 vaccines were created in less than a year. Just as important, the leading COVID-19 vaccines worked amazingly well. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were more than 90 percent effective against early COVID-19 variants. More than seven billion vaccine doses were administered in 184 countries in the first eleven months of 2021. Unfortunately, too many people who could have been vaccinated chose not to, and too many people who wanted to get vaccinated couldn’t. That was deadly because COVID-19 is incredibly adaptive. The Delta variant, first identified in December 2020 in India, was more infectious than its predecessors and soon became the dominant strain around the world. In November 2021, South African scientists identified the emergence of the Omicron variant. Within weeks it had been found around the world. As 2021 draws to a close, it is unclear whether Omicron presents a greater health threat than the previous versions. What is clear is that more than 5 million people globally and 800,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 to date. Moderna and Pfizer both report that people who have received booster shots should be okay, but with so many unvaccinated and with the rapid increase in cases, two things are clear: it is likely we will see more variants and it will be a long time before we return to normal, if ever.