One could sense the global sigh of relief and then the utter joy last week after the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidance that fully vaccinated people could stop wearing masks in outdoor crowds and in most indoor settings.

It marked a major step towards returning to some semblance of life as we knew it before the novel coronavirus pandemic, and hope for an end to the long night of suffering and death that shook the world to its core and changed our lives forever.

The guidance still calls for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons, and homeless shelters. But it will help pave the way for reopening workplaces, schools, and other venues, even removing the need for social distancing for those fully vaccinated — people who are two weeks past their last required dose.

The guidance represents excellent news for Jamaica, particularly the tourism sector upon which our country depends so much for a huge chunk of our employment and the main foreign exchange earner, as its linkages run throughout the economy.

Americans will feel freer to travel without some of the restrictions, notably the need to self-quarantine, which can reduce the quality and length of vacation or business trips. Fully vaccinated Jamaicans, with proof, will not have to quarantine in the States — though a negative COVID-19 test is still required.

All this is thanks to the COVID-19 vaccine which will no doubt take its place among the modern marvels of 21st century medicine and open a new chapter in how to deal with epidemics, pandemics and the vaccines which we use to fight them.

One of the key elements in the emergence of the COVID-19 vaccine is the speed of development — Operation Warp Speed, as the US Administration named it — such that anti-vaxxers were able to use that to scare off millions of people worldwide.

But it is that very speed which is now making it possible to begin the journey back, in what could be regarded as a relatively short time, after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 vaccine benefited from all the scientific work done over decades and got the tremendous funding needed to do the all-important human trials.

In the US, which bore the brunt of the impact, an aggressive vaccination campaign has resulted in pushing virus cases to their lowest rate since September, deaths to their lowest point since last year April, and the test positivity rate to its lowest since the pandemic began.

With the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines the world now has a choice between waiting for herd immunity in the population through exposure to the disease and through vaccination. The World Health Organization, thankfully, supports achieving herd immunity through vaccination.

Vaccine sceptics would want the world to seek immunity by allowing a disease to spread through the population, with no concern about the resulting suffering from unnecessary cases and deaths.

What is the use of the explosion of knowledge to which we have access if it is not to be used against an enemy like a pandemic?