In December 2020, the first shots in the war against covid-19 were fired into the arms of health care workers with the emergency-use authorization of a vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech. Those were followed by another similar authorization for a Moderna vaccine two weeks later, and then in early 2021, Johnson & Johnson’sone-dose shot was given the same green light.

The production and release and hundreds of clinics that have been held since — giving strong protection to Americans against a pandemic and helping to restart an economy that had chugged to a crawl amid its restrictions — was much anticipated. But not everyone jumped to roll up their sleeves.

Bizarre conspiracy thinking about the vaccines — microchips implanted for world domination, etc. — has circulated too widely over social media, rather than lurking in the fringes. Other people have used the word “experimental” to describe the vaccines. But while the term was accurate for the trial groups that took it early in its testing phase, it became obsolete when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccines for the public, based on rigorous clinical trials and research.

Still, it is not beyond reason for someone of a skeptical mind to want to wait for that official, final FDA approval. It took less than a year from the first diagnoses of the coronavirus in China until the first authorized shots were administered. It was a lightning fast process, true, but it wasn’t reinventing the wheel.

The existing technology for dealing with coronaviruses and vaccines needed to be bent to this new example. Meanwhile, industry and government alike say the streamlining was done not by removing safeguards but through removing unnecessary red tape hurdles and years of hoping for funding, obstacles successfully eliminated by the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. It’s amazing what can happen when science is allowed to progress without bureaucracy.

Now the approval has been given for the Pfizer vaccine. Moderna is likely to follow within a month or so.

Those arguments about a medication that has not been fully approved are resolved. Both have also been OK’d for booster doses in the face of the delta variant that is causing numbers to rise in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania counties like Allegheny and Westmoreland have joined the list of those where spread is once again considered high.

So those people who were delaying their vaccines because of the approval will get their shots now, right? We can hope.

Pennsylvania’s vaccination numbers have slowed in recent weeks, with just 64.5% of residents having at least one dose. Allegheny is better at 69.3% but Westmoreland has just 56.2%. The goal is to get as many people has possible vaccinated to limit spread to those who can’t receive it because of issues like immunosuppression.

The pandemic isn’t over. But its control is now in our hands — or our arms. It is in the power of everyone to do what will keep them healthy and keep their family and friends and neighbors and, yes, the economy healthy.

It is no longer an experiment or a temporary permission. At least one vaccine is fully authorized. The time for hemming and hawing like a kid afraid of needles is past. Just get it done.

— The Tribune-Review, Greensburg/TNS