STORY AT-A-GLANCE The COVID-19 vaccine may in fact be the most fast-tracked vaccine ever created in all history, which necessitates the elimination of required safety testing steps, such as animal testing Pfizer in collaboration with BioNTech began human trials in the U.S. of a COVID-19 vaccine on May 11, 2020. If successful, the vaccine could be released as early as September 2020 with an FDA-approved Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) Like Moderna and several other competitors, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is using messenger RNA (mRNA) rather than live or attenuated (inactivated) viruses grown in animal cells Previous attempts to create coronavirus vaccines have failed due to coronaviruses triggering production of two different types of antibodies — one that fights disease and one that triggers “paradoxical immune enhancement” that often results in very serious disease and/or death Vaccines that caused paradoxical immune enhancement initially looked very promising as they pr...