The COVID pandemic, looming over us now for 11 months, has become a real-life serial action drama. A cast of billions hustles to keep up with changes in the script.

It can be dizzying to digest the latest news and wearying to live with the uncertainties, and Americans are feeling that. Some respond with skepticism to claims that the vaccines being administered here and in other countries can protect them, or with cynicism toward predictions of better times ahead. But negativity kills, and this we can already see for ourselves: 2021 is not a rerun of 2020. This show has entered a new season.

In the last six weeks, with the start of mass vaccinations of Americans in the highest-risk groups, infections, hospitalizations and deaths have begun to plummet. Nationally, President Biden's stated goal of vaccinating one million people per day is being met and even exceeded. 

In Connecticut, nearly all nursing home residents have had at least one shot, and the majority has had both doses. The number of cases in nursing homes has declined by two-thirds in the past three weeks.

More than a third of seniors over 75 have had their first dose. Yes, there were glitches in the initial sign-ups, partly because the Lamont administration failed at first to recognize the challenges that digital technology presents to some elderly people. They use telephones to make appointments, and there were not enough lines or people staffing the phones. That has improved.

We hope that these early successes will serve as evidence that mass vaccination is proving to be exactly what we hoped for throughout last year — an effective way to get the pandemic under control and off our backs.

New York Times opinion writer David Leonhardt wrote Monday that it is not just the long haul that has worn people down. More important, and a lot quicker to fix, is the need for a better definition of "effectiveness." Hearing that, say, the two-dose Pfizer vaccine may be more effective than the one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine expected to be available soon, it's not immediately obvious that vaccine makers have a different standard of effectiveness than medical personnel on the front lines.

The distinction matters. The makers of vaccines need to demonstrate to the FDA the highest attainable level of total prevention, meaning the percentage of people who won't contract COVID at all. But for public health purposes, an effective vaccine is one that prevents deaths, serious illness and resulting long-term complications. Thus far, the vaccines are accomplishing both in the vast majority of people. That means they are effective at keeping people alive and lightening the burden on the health care system now and in the future, even if some recipients get a mild, flu-like case of COVID.

With the same goal of avoiding dire illness, doctors are now making better use of medicines and techniques that treat people who are already infected. Those are contributing to lower mortality rates and fewer hospitalizations.

If February 2021 were more like February a year ago, we would have only growing fears and questions, few certainties, fewer masks, little preparation. The nation was set up for failure against the pandemic, and for the deaths that followed. It is already mourning 440,000 people who were all alive a year ago.

Uncertainties and fears are still with us, of course. We hear warnings of unpredictable but ominous new variants that may surpass the prevailing strains of COVID. Vaccines are already being retooled for the new strains. The past year has also equipped us with new technologies and treatments that will go from pandemic remedies to wider applications, like the science that came out of the space program. And with the federal government taking the lead, as it should have from the start, vaccines are getting to people sooner and more reliably. 

Doctors say that when your turn comes for a shot, get whatever brand is offered — Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson — and you will be far safer than with no vaccination at all.

Hope is the consolation prize for uncertainty. We can't foresee every twist and turn this viral enemy will take, but last spring all we had was worry. Now we have an action plan.  

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.