| The scientific community was highly skeptical that just because something was called Operation Warp Speed, it could produce a Covid-19 vaccine in less than a year.
But here we are less than 12 months before the virus first started making its way onto some radar screens and there are two vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S.
In another year's time, when we hope to have returned to some kind of normal, what happens to all that impressive streamlining and cooperation?
"I don't think drug development is ever going to be the same," said Alison Bateman-House, an assistant professor at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine. "I think ALS and metastatic breast cancer and other diseases of high unmet need are going to be demanding 'Where's my Warp Speed?'" While the question is justified, an answer is going to require some soul- searching, said Christopher Austin, director of the National Institutes of Health's National Center on Advancing Translational Science. The center is leading some Operation Warp Speed-backed clinical trials on therapeutics for Covid-19.  Shawn Seamans, president of RxCrossroads by McKesson Corp., speaks during an Operation Warp Speed vaccine summit at the White House earlier this month. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg "It's the first time in my lifetime where everyone felt the fear, and therefore urgency, for therapeutic development that people with terminal disease feel every single day," Austin said.
Operation Warp Speed is an unprecedented collaboration between the pharmaceutical industry and the government that's bolstered by an $18 billion budget and the work of hundreds of academics and scientists -- all operating at a level of productivity never seen before in the medical community. That mammoth lift, however, probably isn't sustainable.
"This progress over the last year has been at the expense of a massive amount of sleepless nights," Bateman-House said.
But just because scientists and researchers can't continue to work at such a harried pace doesn't mean we shouldn't be asking how we can do better when not living through a pandemic. "The research community has a scientific, medical and ethical responsibility to act differently, to collaborate more freely, to share data more freely, to share experience, work in teams and share credit," Austin said.
On the regulatory end, the Food and Drug Administration, however beleaguered it may be, has attempted to help the pharmaceutical industry speed development and managed to drastically condense review processes.
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has said the agency is reviewing the steps it's taken during the pandemic to see which might be implemented long-term.
And of course, financial investment is also key, as Operation Warp Speed has shown. It will take a societal shift to vastly improve on the chronic underfunding of the nation's health agencies.
The silver lining of the pandemic, Austin says, is having concrete proof that if endeavors are resourced appropriately and people come together to research and smooth the way for discovery, "miraculous things really can happen."--Anna Edney and John Lauerman | 
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