VACCINES:
1) At The Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu explains why vaccines, in general, do not protect us for at least several days or even weeks after the final shot. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says we should not start to change our behavior, e.g. "mingling maskless in small groups indoors, visiting the unvaccinated on a limited basis, and skipping post exposure quarantines,” until at least two weeks after the final dose of a two-dose vaccine or after a one-dose vaccine (in the U.S., the latter refers to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). Until that time has passed, infection with SARS-CoV-2 is “entirely expected,” Wu writes. “The shot simply delivers a package of study materials to the body; immune cells must then internalize the information about the infectious invader, a complex process that unfolds over days or weeks.” Data collected by COVID-19 vaccine makers shows that a “threshold of protection” is crossed two weeks after full vaccination, Wu writes. But “there’s nothing special about day 14,” according to an MIT immunologist, the story states. In summary, don’t mistake “the time of injection” as “the time of protection,” Wu writes (3/17/21): https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/how-long-wait-fully-vaccinated/618303/.
2) What about after that two-week period? Yes, it is possible for a COVID-19 vaccinated person to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 even after that two-week or so period, Katherine J. Wu wrote in a subsequent story for the Atlantic (3/19/21), but these cases are a “vanishingly small percentage” of all people who have been vaccinated. As she explains, “the goal of vaccination isn’t eradication, but a détente in which humans and viruses coexist, with the risk of disease at a tolerable low.” Each individual’s immune response to vaccination can differ somewhat in its strength. Think of your COVID-19 vaccination as a “layer of protection, like an umbrella, that might guard better in some situations than others,” Wu writes, drawing on the insights of a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York. In many situations, “vaccines are still best paired with safeguards such as masks and distancing — just as rain boots and jackets would help buffer someone in a storm,” the story states: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/vaccine-breakthrough-cases/618330/.
3) Katelyn Jetelina, of the University of Texas Health Science Center, updated her COVID-19 vaccine table, adding figures from recently released data (which have not yet been assessed by independent experts) on large-scale studies of the effectiveness and safety of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine (3/14/21). Jetelina writes that this vaccine “works great against the old variants (efficacy=96%) and against B.1.1.7 (UK efficacy=86.3%) and B.1.351 (South Africa efficacy=48.6%). In all of the trials [experiments], there were 0 hospitalizations and 0 deaths in the vaccine group.” The chart also now includes early data (“early” is science-speak for “we don’t trust these intriguing data yet, because there is so little of it”) on “asymptomatic transmission" of SARS-CoV-2 by people who have received a particular vaccine. I’m not entirely clear on this phrase’s meaning, but it appears to be a stand-in for a scenario in which a vaccinated person gets infected but not sick and might transmit the virus to an unvaccinated person. Jetelina’s summary of those results: “There are now 7 sub-studies/press releases that confirm a 50-95% reduced transmission after vaccination. This is a big range, which is typical of drastically different scientific studies”: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/noteworthy-covid19-studies-from-the.
4) For the moment, a U.S. surge in SARS-CoV-2 infections that was anticipated to hit mid-March due to variants has not hit, writes Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist (3/15/21). Why not? Jetelina writes that reasons could include a head start on vaccinations before variants took a hold here, unlike the case in the UK, as well as strengthened public health efforts to reinforce mask-wearing, social distancing, travel restrictions, and hand-washing (3/15/21): https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/where-is-the-variant-surge.
5) As you may know or can confirm in Jetelina’s chart in above link, only one COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer-BioNTech's, has been authorized for use in children of any age, and that is just for children who are nearly no longer children — 16 years and older. More experiments to test COVID-19 vaccines among younger children are under way or soon to be, reports Denise Grady at The New York Times (3/16/21). Moderna announced on 3/16/21 that it will soon test its vaccine in more than 6,000 health children ages six months to 11 years old in the U.S. and Canada, the story states. Already under way, Grady reports: Moderna safety-and-effectiveness experiments to test its COVID-19 vaccine in 3,000 children ages 12 to 17; Pfizer-BioNTech experiments of its COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 12 to 15 years old; and AstraZeneca tests of its COVID-19 vaccine in UK children 6 years and older: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/health/moderna-covid-vaccine-children.html.
6) For Kaiser Health News, Anna Almendrala describes efforts in California and in Chicago that are helping “disadvantaged people get vaccinated," she writes. These efforts can be particularly useful in helping people who are low-income, disabled or isolated get vaccinated, according to the president of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County, the story states. The story links to an organization called Get Out the Shot: Los Angeles whose volunteers have booked thousands of appointments, Almendrala reports. “The most skilled vaccine bookers have memorized the days and times certain sites release a new batch of appointments,” the story states. This site is helping people who live in California’s Inland Empire get appointments (3/11/21): https://khn.org/news/article/vaccine-altruists-find-appointments-for-those-who-cant/.
7) Here’s another way that people have scored COVID-19 vaccines sooner than expected, at least in Arizona — volunteer at vaccination sites, reports Steve Nielsen at Fox 10 Phoenix. However, there’s a waiting list for volunteer positions, Nielsen reports. Volunteer work includes scheduling appointments and checking people in, according to the director of the state's Department of Health Services, the story states (2/22/21): https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-covid-19-vaccination-site-volunteers-are-receiving-vaccine-doses.
PUBLIC HEALTH:
8) Some useful double-masking tips can be found in this 3/17/21 guide by Tara Parker-Pope and Dani Blum at The New York Times, specifically: 1) Wear a cloth mask over a surgical mask rather than wearing two surgical masks to minimize side-gaps; and 2) there’s no need to double-mask if you’re wearing an N95 or KN95: https://www.nytimes.com/article/double-masking-tips-coronavirus.html.
9) In the first 2 months of COVID-19 vaccine roll-outs, SARS-CoV-2 infections fell rapidly among nursing home workers and nursing home residents in the U.S., as well as among workers at some hospitals in England and Israel, according to data and research covered by Melissa Bailey and Shoshana Dubnow at Kaiser Health News (3/15/21). That said, COVID-19 vaccines are not mandatory in most U.S. nursing homes, Bailey and Dubnow report. And some nursing home workers don’t yet trust the vaccines, the story suggests. Many nursing home staffers are Black or Latinx people, and are well aware of the legacy of racist medical experimentation. On 3/10/21, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued guidelines for nursing-home visitors allowing indoor visits regardless of vaccination status, with exceptions such as a high positivity rate in the county, vaccination rates below 70% among facility residents, and residents with a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. A combination of vaccines and “effective infection prevention and control programs/practices” have led to the drop in infections at such U.S. facilities, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control spokesperson quoted in the piece. A Johns Hopkins University infectious diseases specialist who advises nursing homes on COVID-19 responses emphasizes the role of hard-won immunity among SARS-CoV-2-infection survivors in long-term care facilities, as well as the role of vaccines. “Having even one or two vaccinated people in a building can slow transmission,” the specialist is described as stating: https://khn.org/news/article/covid-cases-plummet-among-nursing-home-staffers-despite-vaccine-hesitancy/.
10) James Hamblin’s latest piece for The Atlantic (3/11/21) focuses on the uncertainties that remain regarding the future of the COVID-19 pandemic. He writers: “Today, the experts I trust most are those who seem to have grown less certain over the course of the pandemic, and have learned the humility it should force upon us all.” Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist who accurately forecast last year that SARS-CoV-2 would infect 40 to 70 percent of the U.S. (we’re currently around 40% the story states), said last July that he is “out of the business” of prediction, writes Hamblin, an MD and lecturers at the Yale School of Public Health. The pandemic will end with a whimper, not a roar, the piece suggests: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/stop-asking-fauci-to-predict-the-future-of-covid-19/618261/.
11) U.S. regulators are scrutinizing ingredients called quats, or quaternary ammonium compounds, in disinfectants — e.g. Lysol wipes and aerosol disinfectants — that are widely used these days to clean surfaces and hands, reports freelance science journalist Casey Crownhart for Environmental Health News (2/19/21). Quats makers say they are safe, but the compounds are now “becoming more present in the environment,” Crownhart writes, and could pollute waterways, disrupt marine food chains, and lead to antibiotic-resistant microbes. Bacteria might evolve “cross-resistance” to various antiseptics if mutations that help microbes survive quats also end up protecting them against other products and medications, the story suggests. A University of California, Davis, microbiologist who studies how bacteria develop resistance to quats is paraphrased in the piece as stating that "the best way to respond to the problem of antibiotic resistance may be not to develop new quats…but to reconsider whether we should be using them at all, at least in some products.” Researchers now are looking into the potential for quats to cause work-related asthma and endocrine disruption, Crownhart reports. In the meantime, alternatives include disinfecting products made with citric acid, lactic acid or hydrogen peroxide, according to a research analyst with the Environmental Working Group, the story states (2/19/21): https://www.ehn.org/quats-health-covid-disinfectant-2650608215/states-take-notice.
SCIENCE:
12) Coronavirus variants such as the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 that now is widespread in the UK and the U.S., likely evolved over the course of several months in infected people with weakened immune systems, according to some virologists, reports Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times (3/15/21). Early evidence suggests that some SARS-CoV-2 variants might be more contagious or cause more severe COVID-19. If variants do originate in people with long-lasting SARS-CoV-2 infections, vaccination efforts should prioritize people whose immune systems are compromised, according to sources quoted in the piece. That category of people could include people with blood-related cancers, diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis, as well as people undergoing chemotherapy or taking immune-suppressing drugs, the story states. However, this group of people might need additional protection from SARS-CoV-2. “For the same reason that these people don’t mount a strong immune response to the virus, vaccines might not work well in them. So they may need to be treated with cocktails of monoclonal antibodies as well,” according to a University of Michigan virologist, the story states (3/15/21): https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/health/coronavirus-variants-immunocompromised-patients.html.
13) In this authoritative interview with William Kearney, Janet Napolitano, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security who is now on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, reflects on public research universities in the time of COVID-19, as well as U.S. national security's “real risks, not perceived ones,” that she thinks should be foremost, including pandemics, climate change, and cybersecurity. Napolitano makes a strong case for the role for federal government in leading the national response to a pandemic, and for proactive anticipating scenarios that threaten U.S. security. “A key critique in the 9/11 Commission’s report was that we suffered from a failure of imagination,” Napolitano says. "All the data were there, but we simply couldn’t imagine a complicated plot to take over aircraft and fly them into places like the World Trade Center…That’s a challenge to leaders. When I say scenario-planning or scenario-thinking, it’s the what if questions: What if the mortality rate for COVID was even higher? What if extreme weather events take out Miami…And so once you say [see] those kinds of things, you can begin reverse engineering them. How would the federal government respond?” (Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2021; published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and Arizona State University): https://issues.org/janet-napolitano-cybersecurity/.
ENTERTAINMENT:
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