COVID Transmissions for 8-12-2020

Aug 12, 2020

Greetings from an undisclosed location in my apartment.

It has been 269 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19.

Housekeeping note:

Headlines only today. Yesterday’s in-depth was a lot of work, and I think the next one I have planned will take just as much.

Glossary terms are bolded words with links to the running newsletter glossary.

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Now, let’s talk COVID.

Russian Roulette:

The Russians have licensed an essentially untested COVID-19 “vaccine.” I use the scare quotes because it is not an impressive matter to skip safety and efficacy testing and just throw a vaccine into humans. A bad vaccine could screw up the ability of anyone who gets it to have an effective future response to a properly-designed vaccine.

I have no reason to suspect that the vaccine technology is unsound, but the judgment used in approving it untested certainly was. See an accurate takedown of this terrible decision here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/11/the-russian-vaccine

Airborne virus:

Numerous people have expressed skepticism that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted through the air. One of the key experiments in understanding if it can be would be to properly suspend the virus in an aerosol and then see if that aerosol can infect cells.

One research group, as described in the New York Times, has found a way to create realistic aerosols and test whether or not these aerosols can infect cells: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/health/coronavirus-aerosols-indoors.html

This group claims that they have demonstrated the ability of aerosolized virus to infect cells, but the paper that they have created has not yet been peer-reviewed. I plan to follow the story and see when it is accepted for publication. However, Dr. Linsey Marr, a well-recognized expert in aerosols as mediators of infectious disease, seems to find the results credible, calling them “a smoking gun.” While this is potentially an awkward pun, it is also a very strong endorsement.

The real question is—if this is true, what does it mean?

If the SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted through the air, it means that the advice that has been recommended since April is still accurate: Masks and social distancing need to be combined to prevent transmission. It is not masks OR social distancing; it is masks AND social distancing.

COVID-19 prevention with monoclonal antibodies:

Two human trials have begun examining whether monoclonal antibody treatments can prevent COVID-19, announced in this press release from NIAID: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/clinical-trials-monoclonal-antibodies-prevent-covid-19-now-enrolling

These trials are interesting. A monoclonal antibody is a single antibody against a single specific antigen, which has been mass-produced through the magic of bioengineering. They are, primarily, a laboratory tool and I’ve used them hundreds of times, if not thousands, to conduct various experiments. However, they can also be used therapeutically—most notably, to treat certain cancers by targeting mutated proteins that appear in cancerous cells.

Normally, an antibody response is “polyclonal”; this means that multiple types of antibodies against different antigens are generated in response to a foreign invader. One antibody might target one part of a virus protein, while another might target the same protein but in a different location, and yet another might target a different protein altogether. In combination, these antibodies provide a response to the pathogen.

Monoclonal antibodies are what happens when we isolate just one type of antibody against just one antigen.

They might be able to work effectively to prevent infection of new cells by the virus, which might both prevent disease and potentially treat disease after someone has caught it. The trials are looking at both possibilities.

The prevention angle will only matter if a vaccine candidate does not appear to work in the near term. In the event that no vaccine succeeds soon, these monoclonal antibodies, if they work, could be used to protect healthcare workers and other essential personnel to help them continue to function through an outbreak. The protection would be short-lived, most likely, and would require periodic infusions of antibodies to top up the immunity provided. This would not be ideal for most patients, and would certainly get expensive.

Hopefully they work! The more tools we have to fight this virus, the better.

What am I doing to cope with the pandemic? This:

Listening

We’ve trained a Pandora station on Cake and the Gorillaz, and that’s been the soundtrack this week.

Watching

A British show, A Stitch in Time, just showed up on Amazon Prime. It’s an attempt to recreate historic garments seen in art and museums, to show them as they would have looked at the time. It’s really interesting, and the host—a university lecturer, police forensic consultant, and DJ named Amber Butchart, might be the coolest person I have ever heard of.

Cooking

I made a ratatouille tonight out of summer squash and eggplant that were starting to age poorly; I think it’s easy to find a good ratatouille recipe online, so I won’t belabor it, but I do want to mention that years ago someone told me to try putting cooked orecchiette pasta into a ratatouille before roasting it, and I will say this is almost always a Good Call.

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