I can't believe that no one has posted this New Yorker article from two weeks ago.
THE PLAGUE YEAR
It's a great summary and timetable of events of 2020. Infuriating and frustrating, but informative. It's a long read and puts everything in great detail, but well worth your time.
Someone said earlier in the thread, but if you or your parents are eligible to be vaccinated, be persistent, keep trying, do whatever it takes, it will happen. I was able to get vaccinated at a small family clinic on the 2nd and I go back for round two on the 30th. They gave me the number for an affiliated facility and I was able to get my parents vaccinated 10-days later. Keep trying. Show up and tell them you'll wait for a no-show. Don't take "no" for an answer.
Read the article.
No. Because (apparently) the formula for this vaccine is completely different and most of the heavy lifting had been done as early as 2013. Moderna's messenger-RNA delivery platform worked, but they had never brought a vaccine to market. In 2013 structure based vaccine design was developed, but MERS faded and funding went away before it could be tested on humans. Once the Chinese posted the genomic sequence the same group could design the proteins to defeat this coronavirus and to be fitted on the messenger RNA. Then they turned it over to Moderna for manufacturing. As Coach Royal would say, "it's where preparation met opportunity".