The whole world held its breath in anticipation of the main news of 2020 - who will be the first to invent the vaccine.
Here and there fakes appeared, and on August 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that in Russia - for the first time in the world - a coronavirus vaccine was registered. Naturally, the world shuddered, Vladimir Putin once again graced the covers of the Western press and the news began to be discussed by the entire planet.
Will the Russians really save the world? This scenario is too unusual for today's reality, where we have long ceased to be leaders in science and its development for people.
Competition dictates the rules of the game in the public field. We know how intense the competition for space exploration has been. We defended Gagarin, but the Moon is behind the Americans, as, obviously, the first commercial flights to Mars.
The TV was invented by Zvorykin, but in America. I am silent about the phone in our hand, cars - from washing to car - we are also clearly not of Russian origin. And this list can be continued indefinitely, because at the heart of the foundations lies the strongest geopolitical rivalry for intellectual superiority.
We know the war going on over control of communications and social media content. The battle for a vaccine against a backdrop of severe economic damage in recent decades simply cannot be otherwise.
Microbiology and its branches, including bacteriology, have always been strong directions of our science. We can recall the Nobel Prize laureate Ilya Mechnikov. Or the creator of the plan to combat epidemics, Nikolai Gamaley, and many other scientists who made a significant contribution to the development of this science.
When they talk about the development of a new Russian bacteriological weapon, it is not difficult to suspect us. Even at James Bond, the crazy professor is Russian by nationality. His tasks are classic for a Russian anti-hero, but while Her Majesty is on guard of the world with the faithful soldier Bond, he can be saved from our aggression. Everyone willingly believes in these horror stories. But when we say that we can give the world a chance, he categorically disagrees with this chance.
Immediately after the news about the registration of the vaccine scattered around the world news feeds, Western media began to comment on it in the spirit of "this cannot be, because it can never be."
And I would have doubted what is more here: politics, scientific jealousy, or really reasonable doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccine, if not for one thing. Of course, none of the critics - journalists and specialists - were familiar with the results of our vaccine research. I didn’t delve into it, but just in case condemns. In the modern world, there is less and less time to delve into, and more than enough time to condemn.
"Russia is in a hurry to register an untested coronavirus vaccine," writes The Verge, admitting, however, that the mechanics of the Russian vaccine are similar to those used by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.
“Science and politics are tightly linked in the global quest for a vaccine,” I read for the Associated Press. "Vladimir Putin's announcement [about the Sputnik V vaccine] did not cause awe and amazement comparable to the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite into orbit in 1957."
The Washington Post is also not lagging behind: "Russia has disclosed a vaccine against coronavirus and announced a breakthrough in the global race before the completion of the final testing stage."
Well, Bloomberg goes the farthest: "The representative of the pharmaceutical industry calls the vaccine a Pandora's box."
And what kind of box would this vaccine be if Russia had not invented it?
Or maybe it's just the famous nothing personal, only business and a desire to maintain dominance in the vaccine market? In any case, no matter how difficult it is to understand the essence of the issue in the era of information wars, we ourselves choose whom to trust. And waves of criticism both against the vaccine and against any other initiative or development made in Russia will not go anywhere.
And this is partly our fault, because in terms of information we have long ago given up the image of the savior and lost in this to our Western colleagues. So let's at least now not allow the victory of our science to be devalued just because the Russians should not be the first to save the world. Simply because in the scenarios of American cinema and media that have become familiar for a long time, we are always evil and no one gave us the role of the savior of the world.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.