COVID Transmissions for 3-3-2021
There's a mess in Texas, but more vaccine is coming
Good morning and welcome to COVID Transmissions.
It has been 471 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19. In 471, Theodoric the Great became the King of the Ostrogoths, and went on to become of the most important noblemen of the declining Western Roman Empire. Popular history might have you believe that Theodoric was an ignorant barbarian, but he was actually an extremely wealthy and well-educated Roman nobleman in addition to being an Ostrogothic chieftain. Learning about Theodoric was one of my favorite parts of studying medieval history in college.
In today’s issue, I get pretty steamed about Texas, but go on to talk about some good news about vaccine production.
As usual, bolded terms are linked to the running newsletter glossary.
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Now, let’s talk COVID.
Texas Governor decides to suspend COVID-19 disease control efforts
In a move that is as stunning to me as it is depressing, Governor Abbott of Texas made the following announcement yesterday:
This is a very bad idea. As I reported yesterday, the relative lull in COVID-19 cases in the US is reversing and starting to increase. As Texas demonstrated with a summertime spike in 2020, I don’t think the approaching end of winter is going to do much to slow the virus either.
I really do not understand why Governor Abbott seems to want to increase rates of COVID-19 in the state of Texas. Vaccinations of the state’s population are not high—they are at 6.8%—and in fact the state ranks 48th for vaccination rate. Source here: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/as-gov-abbott-prepares-to-reopen-texas-state-ranks-48th-in-covid-vaccination-rate
The Governor’s announcement stands in stark contrast with the pinned tweet from the CDC:
It’s depressing that we could see all of the progress the US has made against COVID-19 in the last month erased by states deciding disease control is no longer a priority.
Oh, and by the way…Mississippi has apparently done the same thing that Texas has done. I’m more worried about Texas because of its extremely large population by comparison, but neither is a good situation.
Look, I am a virologist. It does not take a virologist to tell you that this is a bad idea, not at this point. We know that masks and distancing work. This is not advice that you need a PhD to give. I would really like it if states around the country would get on the same page as the science and start keeping their citizens alive. I do not want to get on here every day and bore and depress you by saying something like “Masks work, more people are dying, this is very sad and very preventable” every day. That is not why I got my degree and it is not why I work in biomedicine.
I work in biomedicine because I believe that science can make people’s lives better. I happen to be objectively correct in that belief, but political leaders need to put in the work to use science in the right way to realize those benefits. It is infuriating to me to see people’s lives put needlessly at risk in this way. There is nothing political about this issue. There is a deadly disease out there. We need to fight it. That should have been the end of the discussion, back in March 2020. Here we are in March 2021 still having the same conversation.
I would love to get everyone on the same page so we can talk about the breathtaking scientific achievements that are helping us beat the pandemic, rather than having to waste much-needed oxygen on trying to convince people that putting something over your mouth means traffic of virus in and out of your mouth will go down. OK, that’s enough ranting for now. On to some good news.
MERCK and J&J make manufacturing deal to produce vaccine
Merck, a true powerhouse of global vaccination development, has had a poor showing in the COVID-19 vaccine experience. As we covered in past issues, the Merck COVID-19 vaccine program did not succeed. Science is often unforgiving.
However, even if Merck did not invent a vaccine for COVID-19, they are still extremely capable at manufacturing them. As a result, Merck yesterday announced two new agreements: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-to-help-produce-johnson-barda-to-provide-merck-with-funding-to-expand-mercks-manufacturing-capacity-for-covid-19-vaccines-and-medicines/
One agreement is with BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, and provides Merck with hundreds of millions of dollars to expand vaccine manufacturing capacity. The other agreement is with Johnson & Johnson (or more specifically with one of their Janssen subsidiaries) to manufacture large numbers of doses of that company’s COVID-19 vaccine.
This is the kind of thing I want to see more of. I personally might go a lot further—I still think that the government could purchase each of the vaccine patents at $20 billion each and allow every pharmaceutical company with valid manufacturing facilities to make as many doses as it wants. $60 billion would be a bargain compared to what the pandemic has cost, and it would be a tidy profit for the companies that invented these vaccines. But, I don’t think that’s going to happen. So, barring that, I think this type of manufacturing agreement is excellent news.
President Biden announces the US will have enough COVID-19 vaccine for all adults by the end of May 2021
Potentially in light of the above agreement, yesterday President Biden made the incredible announcement that the US is now ahead of schedule for making vaccine available to 100% of American adults. Originally we were looking at this for June or July. They now expect May. In case you feel we are stuck in a perpetual March, let me point out that that is in 2 months! That’s barely any time at all. That is fantastic news for two reasons: (1), the US really needs to get the epidemic here under control and this can’t come fast enough and (2) once we are done vaccinating as many Americans as possible, vaccine doses can be redirected to more people around the world, and help us get the entire pandemic under control.
Here’s the news story on this as well: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/02/973030394/biden-says-u-s-will-have-vaccine-supply-for-all-adults-by-may-prioritizes-teache
It’s really not all bad news!
What am I doing to cope with the pandemic? This:
Playing with the IKEA room planner tool
So, with moving apartments in full swing, I am dedicating a lot of time to trying to figure out what we actually need to do to make the new place livable. That means Monday we went and took full measurements of the place, and over the past couple of days I’ve been playing a real-life version of The Sims by trying to design my new living space.
As it turns out, the IKEA room planning tool is pretty good for this, and has a lot of options for planning out a space if you’re willing to get creative with it. It is, of course, meant to sell IKEA products, but that’s probably the thing it is worst at doing, because the product model catalog available in the web app is extremely limited compared to what IKEA actually makes. Instead, I’ve been creating colorful custom rectangular prisms to represent other furniture from various stores.
Since IKEA seems to be uninterested in benefiting from their tool, I must say I’m impressed with their altruism.
The tool lives here if anyone happens to be interested: https://kitchenplanner.ikea.com/us/UI/Pages/VPUI.htm
Carl Fink kicked off a cool comment thread on yesterday’s issue:
So, I speculate that tomorrow's column will deal with the Merck/J&J deal?
Do you happen to know if there are any investigations into using the J&J virus-vector vaccine as a nasal spray? The vector is a cold virus, it should readily infect the upper respiratory tract, and this might provide increased protection against infection (as opposed to symptomatic infection).
Well, Carl was right! And went on to ask about something interesting. Here’s my reply:
I'm definitely going to talk about that deal (Narrator voice: he did. —Ed). It's exactly the kind of thing I want to be seeing.
I haven't seen any news about J&J developing their vaccine for intranasal delivery. I think it would be a good idea, though, and I agree that the Ad26 vector should be able to infect cells in the airway.
I've heard about a few different candidates of intranasal vaccines. One is being developed by a company called Altimmune. I mention them because their intranasal vaccine candidate, which apparently just entered Phase 1 trials, is named AdCOVID and uses an adenovirus vector as well.
Altimmune is a competitor of the company that I currently work for, however, which does not impact my evaluation of their vaccine product since that's in a totally different disease area, but it is something that I should mention in the interests of full disclosure.
Another reader, identifying themselves as Mcc, followed up on Carl’s comment:
This is something I've been wondering about too. I think one of Cuba's vaccines will use a nasal spray also.
This is true, as noted in my reply:
The vaccine you're thinking of is Mambisa, mentioned in this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/cuba-homegrown-vaccine-program-pressing-on-without-the-west-2021-2
We'll see what comes of it. Their Soberana-02 candidate is far more advanced in the development process right now.
You might have some questions or comments! Send them in. As several folks have figured out, you can also email me if you have a comment that you don’t want to share with the whole group.
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See you all next time.
Always,
JS
It is actually 3 months to Biden's timeframe - end of May. It also means though that end of May is when everyone *could* get a first shot (but everyone won't by then) and which means that its end of June before "everyone" would be vaccinated.
Do you have any sense of the connection between that expedited vaccine production schedule and any improvement in the downstream pipeline? Getting vaccine produced quicker doesn't necessarily move up the schedule to get sufficient people vaccinated if we can't actually schedule appointments to get vaccinated any faster, right?