In December, Anthony Fauci predicted that 70 to 85% of the United States population may need to be vaccinated to achieve "herd immunity" against SARS-CoV-2 (1). Yet he was very careful to qualify his comments. "We need to have some humility here," he said in a New York Times interview, "We really don't know what the real number is." (2) Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted that the number could be as high as 90%.But even a year into the pandemic, there were too many uncertainties to offer a definite threshold. And with vaccine hesitancy widespread, he worried that setting the bar at such a high number would cause the public to despair of ever reaching it.As millions of Americans get vaccinated, the country seeks a return to normalcy. But the concept of "herd immunity" may not be the best way to articulate how we get there. Image credit: Shutterstock/Ringo Chiu.

Pediatric neurosurgeon Amy Lee works by the small, bright light of a microscope, her gaze focused on the opened skull of a child. Lee moves her hands calmly and confidently over the exposed brain, plucking out as much tumor as she safely can.But there are some surgeries, and some parts of the brain, where tumor tissue and healthy tissue look very much alike. In those cases, Lee, based at Seattle Children's Hospital in Washington, looks to a computer monitor beside the operating table, where a view of the brain shows tumor, illuminated in fluorescent green, nestled in otherwise white, healthy tissue. This new diagnostic tool helps surgeons gauge, in real time, how much tumor they've removed, and how much is left behind.That green glow comes from tozuleristide, a new diagnostic drug in phase two clinical trials. But the drug's novelty stems not only from its potential to highlight troublesome childhood tumors, but also from the compound's source: the potent venom of the Israeli deathstalker scorpion (Leiurus quinquestriatus).Tozuleristide uses a peptide from the venom and an infrared dye to seek out and illuminate tumors of all kinds, including in the breast, colon, and skin. The drug has gone through safety testing and early clinical trials to image brain tumors in children, and today stands about two years from possible US Food and A handful of promising new drug candidates are derived from peptides in the venom of scorpions and other animals. Image credit: Shutterstock/Bens_Hikes.

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