RSV had a low profile in public awareness, but it was the leading cause of hospitalization for children under five years old, and it killed upward of sixty thousand in a typical year, possibly as many as 200,000, with 99 percent of those in developing countries. A brutal threat to poor kids in unprivileged circumstances. But this virus presented some special challenges for creating a vaccine: it attacked victims at such a young age; it possessed some tricks for immune evasion; it could reinfect a child, or an adult, after recovery from a first infection; and there was an unfortunate history,
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