I have no real objection to awarding the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, dissident journalists in the Philippines and Russia, respectively, and this is really more Jay Nordlinger’s wheelhouse, but…
… wouldn’t the COVID-19 vaccine makers be the most natural choice for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize? Haven’t they done the most good for the most people all around the world in the past year? If you’re thinking the world’s vaccine makers would be the natural choice for the Nobel Prize for Medicine… no, this year that prize went to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, for “discoveries [that] have unlocked one of the secrets of nature by explaining the molecular basis for sensing heat, cold and mechanical force.” That sounds swell, but doesn’t saving the world from a deadly global pandemic sound like a really sterling achievement?
Still, I guess giving the Nobel Prize to dissident journalists is better than giving it to Yassir Arafat, the European Union, the United Nations, or to Barack Obama in 2009 based entirely on his potential.