Good morning and welcome to COVID Transmissions.
It has been 456 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19. My fun fact is to point out that I think it’s cool when a number contains digits that are also sequential as individual numerals.
I took the day off for President’s day yesterday, but we’re back today with the news that the WHO has given emergency approval to the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine.
As usual, bolded terms are linked to the running newsletter glossary.
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Now, let’s talk COVID.
WHO approves AstraZeneca vaccine for deployment
One of the major responsibilities of the World Health Organization is international vaccination programs. While the WHO does not normally review or approve individual drugs, it does tend to evaluate certain vaccines of interest.
COVID-19 vaccines are, of course, of great interest at this time.
The WHO has now reviewed the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine and approved it as an emergency intervention for control of the disease, which is a step towards getting a vaccine deployed globally through the COVAX program. You can read more about this here:
Previously, WHO provided for the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as well, but the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is a major milestone for a couple of reasons. First, AZ has committed not to turn a profit on this vaccine for the duration of the pandemic, so it can be provided cheaply to less developed countries. Second, it can be shipped at relatively warmer temperatures than the mRNA vaccines, reducing the need for expensive health infrastructure to deploy it.
Global deployment of vaccines is important for us back at home, because it reduces the number of changes that SARS-CoV-2 has to find a receptive host where it can evolve mutations to escape vaccine-induced immunity. Also, it’s important because preventing disease globally is the right thing to do.
What am I doing to cope with the pandemic? This:
Watching: Akhnhaten
Over the weekend, the Metropolitan Opera put up Philip Glass’s Akhnhaten, an opera about an Egyptian Pharaoh who is known for instituting the worship of a single god to Egypt. He also happens to be a near ancestor of Tutankhamun (originally named Tutankhaten, Aten being the name of the god that Akhnhaten instituted). The opera is part of a biographical series of operas that Glass created, each focusing on someone who had a revolutionary vision in a specific topic area (the other two being Einstein and Gandhi).
Akhnhaten is interesting for a lot of reasons, but most especially because it is largely sung in a variety of completely dead languages. Ancient Egyptian—including a poem written by the actual Pharaoh—Ancient Hebrew, and Akkadian all make appearances. Some parts are sung in the local language of the production, as well, probably to give the audience at least some sense of what’s going on.
The Met’s production is really interesting and visually stimulating, building on the music. It was a nice use of three hours. Oh, and there’s a lot of juggling.
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See you all next time. Have a great weekend!
Always,
JS