I am emphatic about letting people know that the vaccine is safe. Some whom I’ve talked to wonder if there were safety shortcuts taken in any way due to the speed at which the vaccines were developed and rolled out. Development was sped up because we are in a true and pressing public health emergency. Though two vaccines — the Pfizer and Moderna versions — were developed and rolled out in record time, the scientific protocols behind them have been being perfected for 25 years. All of the vaccines have gone through full clinical trials, and the Moderna and Pfizer combined clinical trials involved about 70,000 people, which is significant. It can take upwards of 15 years or more typically, for a vaccine to gain approval, but for the COVID-19 vaccines, instead of certain steps being performed one after the other, time was saved by executing them simultaneously. In other words, no steps were skipped, just done alongside each other to achieve the same outcome: having two revolutionary new vaccines ready that are safe to take. These vaccines have received emergency use authorization (EUA) by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), a step the agency takes when there is an urgent public health issue present.