Like COVID-19 Vaccines? Thank Globalization!

With the first federal approval for a COVID-19 vaccine potentially just days away, Vice President Mike Pence took a bit of a victory lap during a speech in Memphis on Thursday.

"Only in America," Pence said, "could you see the kind of innovation that's resulted in the development of a vaccine in record time."

That is at least a less ostentatious framing than the one Pence's boss has used. Last week, President Donald Trump told The Washington Post, "Don't let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine…because the vaccines were me." But the nationalist view of the vaccine breakthrough similarly ignores reality.