Science after the pandemic – Bright side of the moonshots | Leaders – The Economist

THE FIRST virus to have its genome read was an obscure little creature called MS2; the 3,569 RNA letters it contained were published in 1976, the hard-won product of some ten years work in a well-staffed Belgian laboratory. The SARS-CoV-2 genome, almost nine times longer, was published just weeks after doctors in Wuhan first became concerned about a new pneumonia. That feat has since been repeated with getting on for 1m different samples of SARS-CoV-2 in the hunt for fearsome variants like the one…

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