What a tumultuous week!
A consequential election, 17 million minks, COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, and more.
Dear friend:
I hope you are keeping well. What a tumultuous week it’s been! The US Presidential Election was on Tuesday. Joe Biden is set to be the next President of the United States. Kamala Harris will join him as Vice President. Their administration will face the most challenging tenure in the modern era.
For the last few days, newly reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States have passed the 100,000 per day mark. Experts are extremely concerned that this will be a particularly brutal winter in North America and Europe. COVID-19 did not go away on November 4, the day after the election.
Fortunately, with the United States will not leave the World Health Organization (WHO). Biden is forming a COVID-19 task force. Axios reports that former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler and Marcella Nunez-Smith of Yale University will be co-chairing this 12-person task force. Biden’s administration will be responsible for the logistics of the deployment of any vaccine in the U.S.
The window to make meaningful changes to limit climate change is narrowing. The United States will rejoin the Paris Agreement. If COVID-19 seems problematic now, climate change looms large as an even bigger threat. Economic disparities, lack of healthcare, natural habitat destruction and racial inequality plague the planet. Already, Biden has indicated that he considers his responsibility a serious one. Tonight, both Harris and Biden highlighted the need for truth, decency, and for trusting science. Biden in particular mentioned that there could be no economic recovery until coronavirus infections and deaths were under control. His administration takes charge on January 20.
17 million minks in the Denmark may be killed.
There’s a report that Denmark is set to euthanize up to 17 million minks after reports surfaced on SARS-CoV-2 spread and mutations. This is very disappointing news, but that this time there is no basis to suspect that the mutation (which has not been reported in any scientific journal yet) will lead to greater transmission or disease in people. There is also no indication that it will result in less effective vaccines. When pressed on this topic, the WHO essentially gave a non-answer:
Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, the WHO's technical lead for COVID-19, said mutations are normal, and each change needs to be evaluated to see if the affected viruses behave differently. And Mike Ryan, MD, who directs the WHO's health emergencies program, said currently, evidence doesn't suggest there are any differences in the way the variant virus behaves and that it might have a slightly different signature but is still the same virus. However, he added that further evidence is needed.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about reservoirs of viruses and why cross-species transfer means that SARS-CoV-2 will never be eradicated. You can read that newsletter here.
Why the first COVID-19 vaccines may not be the best ones
I have covered this in previous newsletters. But I think it is time to set expectations for the first vaccines that get approved. They may not be the best ones in the long run. Here are four reasons why:
1. Moderna’s RNA vaccine has to be kept at –20 °C. The Pfizer RNA vaccine has to be kept at–70 °C. This is uncommon for vaccines, because these are not like other vaccines in common use. The AstraZeneca/Oxford and Novavax vaccines are slightly better on this aspect since they don't need to be frozen.
2. A successful vaccine might be 50% effective in reducing severity, and not in stopping infection altogether. That's the minimum criterion for success that has been set by the U.S. F.D.A. But I'm not sure many people know this.
3. None of the leading vaccines have been tested in small children. The hallmark of a successful vaccination program is vaccination of small children. The safety profile of these vaccines in pregnant women is unclear as well.
4. Only one of the leading COVID-19 vaccines uses one shot. All of the others require two shots. A two-shot vaccination for an acute disease without the promise of lifelong immunity might not seem attractive to many people.
The anticipated date of the Emergency Use Authorization for the first vaccines has already been pushed back to December. All of it depends on the interim data for the phase III clinical trials underway right now. If all goes well, broader distribution may start in January 2021.
Putting this together, it is unlikely that most countries will reach a 60-70% threshold of vaccination in 2021. This is disappointing, I know, but it’s best to be realistic.
What is the most abundant organism on the entire planet?
I want to switch gears and devote the rest of the newsletter to information not tied to the news.
There are under 8 billion people, which makes for a crowded planet, but that’s clearly not the answer. Ants? No. The answer is not ants. Nor beetles. The distinction belongs to a lifeform that is even smaller.
Air indoors has a million bacteria in a cubic meter. A gram of topsoil has up to 10 billion microbes. There are 10^29 microbes in the ocean which is more than the number of stars in the observable universe. So we are getting warmer.
The most abundant form of life on the planet is a kind of marine bacteria, and it was only discovered in 2002. Pelagibacter ubique is so prevalent that it might be one out every three forms of marine unicellular life. (Don’t worry it doesn’t cause disease in humans).
And if that wasn’t all there’s a virus that exists as part of it’s DNA.
History of the earth in 5.5 minutes.
And I want to end today with a fantastic video. Though I always like to imagine the history of the earth unrolling to Raga Des instead of the bombastic Wagnerian Ride of the Valkyries.
The link for the hardcover “COVID-19: Separating Fact from Fiction” is now available on Amazon’s Indian site.
That’s it for this week. If you like this post, please share it.
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