Politicians are a strange lot. Not content with merely Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is moonlighting as Surgeon General, opining on what medications the President should be taking. Service to the public is a distant memory. The new charge is to invent catchy phrases, like the “new normal,” to quietly coax us into obeying dictates, while ignoring facts and science.

It is not normal to base lifting the lockdowns on the trend in positive novel coronavirus (aka SARS-CoV-2) tests. Predictably, positive tests (with many folks never becoming symptomatic) will continue to increase as more tests are done. Given that the stated goal of lockdowns was to lessen the strain on hospital resources, using hospitalization trends makes more sense.

The idea of moving at “warp speed” probably resonates with Star Wars fans. A galactic empire is impossible if it takes 100 years for a signal, much less a warship, to move from one system to another at the universal speed limit, 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light

Serious science fiction lovers know that the warp drive does not traverse space at faster-than-light speeds. It warps space, or leaps through another dimension—it takes a massive shortcut. So, what’s the shortcut for vaccine development?