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capable of helping people before they get terribly sick. In late 2021, a few of these efforts paid off--not as soon as would have been ideal, but still in time to have a big impact.. Merck and its partners developed a new antiviral called molnupiravir, which could be taken orally and was shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by 30 percent in certain cases. In fact, the drug worked well enough that the clinical trial was stopped early. (This is a common practice in trials--they'll wrap up early if it would be unethical to continue because there's definitive evidence either that the drug is a success, in which case the participants who aren't getting it are receiving clearly inferior treatment, or that the drug is a failure, in which the participants who are getting it are the ones receiving inferior treatment.) Soon, the study of a second oral antiviral, Paxlovid (made by Pfizer), was stopped for even better reasons. When used in combination with another drug and administered soon after symptoms kicked in, it reduced the risk of severe illness or death by nearly 90 percent.8 By the time these announcements came out in late 2021, a large share of the world's population had received at least one dose of a vaccine. But that's no reason to think that therapeutics aren't important, in COVID or any other outbreak. In fact, it's a mistake to think of vaccines as the star of the show and therapeutics as the opening act you would just as soon skip. Consider the time line. In the next epidemic, even if the world is able to develop a vaccine for a new pathogen in 100 days, it will still take a lot of time to get the vaccine to most of the population. This is especially true if you need two doses for full protection. . If the pathogen is especially transmissible and deadly, tens of thousands or more could die without a therapeutic drug. And we'll still need good therapeutics even once there is a vaccine. As we've seen with COVID, not everyone who can take a vaccine will choose to do so. Unless the vaccine