Goodbye, 2020. You were awful, but some lights shine through.

For most people, a list of the best news stories in 2020 would be extremely short. But even in a year marked by much grief and countless sorrows, there have been terrific examples of great changes for the better. Chief among these is the success of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine-development project. Few predicted that one, much less two, pioneering vaccines would result so quickly from this vast outpouring of effort and government funding to the private sector. The remarkable all-hands-on-deck explosion of ventilator production that began last spring might have already faded from memory, but no one whose life has been dealt a blow by the pandemic will ever forget the arrival of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

The covid-19 pandemic won’t be the last one. Another is inevitable, perhaps more dangerous and possibly arriving relatively soon. Operation Warp Speed’s example of public-private partnership has set the standard for how to respond. The scientific breakthroughs assembled under this banner will be a blessing to medical research for decades to come, just as the U.S. space program fueled a half-century’s worth of dynamic scientific and technological advances. In a year shadowed by deadly illness, closed schools and economic setbacks, Operation Warp Speed offered inspiration and hope.