Scientists have done it again. They have come to the rescue of billions of people around the globe.

Their development of vaccines to ward off COVID-19 was done quickly and professionally, overseen by the FDA, whose job it is to ensure medical treatments and products are safe and effective.

The development of vaccines for COVID-19 was achieved faster than most officials and doctors in the field of epidemiology had dared to hope.

And the Trump administration gets credit for setting regulatory parameters and financial incentives that facilitated the U.S. work of the pharmaceutical companies involved.

But the true heroes in this story are the scientists from around the world who developed the vaccine, and the scientists who came before them.

No doubt, it was a global effort, one that depended on a huge body of research already compiled on vaccines. Without that earlier knowledge, bringing a COVID-19 vaccine to patients would have taken years.

The building-block nature of science has been recognized by those in the field for centuries. It was in 1675 that Isaac Newton gave us the quote: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Newton was not talking about vaccines, but of the ability to expand human knowledge by building on the work of scientists who had come earlier.

And that work was not always steeped in academia.

In the United States, inoculation against disease got its start in the early 1700s through an unusual collaboration involving a Puritan minister, his Black slave and a Boston doctor.

It was the enslaved West African Onesimus who described to his owner Cotton Mather the procedure of rubbing pus from a smallpox sore into the skin of a healthy person, which we now know triggered the body’s immune system to release antibodies to fight off the infection.

That method of vaccination was used until Boston doctor Edward Jenner used Onesimus’ information and his own observations and experiments to develop a less risky inoculation for smallpox using the cowpox virus.

In the centuries since, vaccines have saved countless lives.

Scientists are still often mystified by new viruses and their mutations, and they still don’t fully understand some viruses – such as HIV – that they have studied for decades.

But what scientists have learned and put to use has extended the lives of people around the world, eradicating or reducing diseases that can cause paralysis, blindness, deafness, infertility and cancer, as well as death.

Measles, diphtheria, hepatitis, tuberculosis, polio … it’s a long list and still growing.

Often the biggest challenge facing doctors and scientists as they battle disease is the fear and disinformation spread by anti-vaccination forces.

It’s a serious obstacle in efforts to slow and stop the spread of COVID-19.

As they spread lies and mistrust, anti-vaccination groups and activists need to be countered by accurate information from officials in government and science.

That information effort needs to be daily, widespread and include local, national and global media.

This is, after all, the best news we’ve had in a long while.

2020 was the year scientists rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

2021 can be the year Americans roll up their sleeves and get the vaccine, thereby helping – rather than thwarting – the effort to save hundreds of thousands more lives.

With Christmas about a week away, it’s time to send out my wish list.

At the top of that list is a wish that people would stop stereotyping people by their generation.

I don’t really mind the insults directed at us Boomers. By now, we’ve lived enough to toughen up and laugh at ourselves.

Boomers who aren’t at that point? Well, they just prove our critics correct.

But it is simple-minded to catalog individual people as selfish, ethical, honest, hard-working, or any number of other adjectives based on when they were born.

There are, of course, generational differences. As technology, economic status, culture and family situations change, so do people’s behaviors and attitudes.

Research has quantified, for example, that millennials are more likely to support gay rights than are older generations. And Gen Z Americans (those born after 1996) are more likely to vote as young adults than were their parents or grandparents.

Translating generational trends into criticism of individuals, however, almost always misses the mark.

We all have heard people talk about how “workers today” or “kids today” can’t do math, spell, or work hard.

That has not been my experience. From coast to coast, I have found that age has nothing to do with such attributes as honesty and dedication, or with math and spelling skills.

Rather, those who catalog people by age usually are attempting to lift their own worth by demeaning those who are younger – or older.

Number 2 on my list: I wish fewer people felt the need to share conspiracy theories. The spread of hogwash on social media and elsewhere does not bode well for our democracy.

Number 3: I wish videos of cats and dogs online would become passe.

Number 4: Ditto for selfies.

Number 5 is a gift exchange idea: I wish Republicans in Kansas would finally stop blaming Barack Obama for crap and that Democrats would stop blaming Sam Brownback.

Number 6: I wish people whose jobs depend on public funds thought a little longer before complaining about having to pay taxes.

Of course it’s their right as Americans to complain about taxes. It might even be a requirement.

But there’s definitely a logic disconnect when military personnel and other public employees bitterly complain about paying taxes – any taxes.

The same disconnect occurs among many Americans who get publicly funded pensions, or whose employers are government contractors. And then there are those who receive taxpayer-funded subsidies, Medicare and other government benefits.

Many of us want to believe the government funds and subsidies we personally receive are “earned,” but that virtually all the other stuff government spends money on is excessive or foolish.

What’s foolish is to simultaneously desire more government funds for ourselves while bitterly complaining about being required to pay taxes.

Number 7: I wish that politicians who choose to run for office – often spending millions of dollars – would stop trying to convince us that they don’t like politics at all, and that they aren’t really politicians.

Number 8: I wish authorities would enforce the laws that have been passed regulating email spam and telephone marketing.

Number 9: I wish that this time next year, we are all wishing one another Merry Christmas without masks – and with a calendar packed with plans for parties and visits to family and friends.