A vaccine that works

I confess I was writing a summary of my articles on SARS-CoV-2 and it was not going well. Maybe I will start from scratch, but in the meantime, my colleagues Kelly Kandra and Elias Olsen and I have made a video. (It is a little stiff, but we will get better at it). When this infection started, there was one scientific paper in The Lancet, the British medical journal and the SARS-Cov-2 sequence that arrived at the NIH on January 10, 2020. The stories of the first scientists who discovered the disease and sequenced the virus are heroic because doing science in an authoritarian society can be scary. The intense effort continued in labs and hospitals around the world. There are now tens of thousands of papers and we know a lot about the biology of the Coronaviruses and how to confront them.

Most important, we have several vaccines and more specialized ones on the way. There have been few adverse effects, but people wisely have questions. One is about side effects. So far there have been very few. Second shots of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines sometimes cause a day of slight fever. So do other vaccines; it’s a small price to pay.

What about efficacy? No person, even old people who got properly vaccinated died of Covid-19. The clinical trials were thorough and convincing. They involved 30,000 people in the Phase 3 trials. In fairness, clinical trials cannot pick up an event that occurs once in a million vaccinated people.

Are these vaccines safe if they were made so quickly? Yes. With older vaccines we did not know why or how the virus was attenuated; it just was. Scientists had to passage the measles, mumps and rubella viruses through cells and animals until they found a variant that could provoke an immune response without hurting an animal or a person. That takes years.

Poliovirus has about 6000 subunits called ribonucleotides in its genome. In the attenuated Sabin vaccine, only a few of these were altered. Prof. Vincent Racaniello at Columbia discovered the small number of changes after sequencing DNA became possible. For years the world used that vaccine without knowing the small number of changes in the virus. With mRNA technology scientists deleted all genes except the famous Spike protein, so no viruses are made. The current vaccines deal with all current variants of the Spike protein. Many new vaccines will be made using this technology, including to Zika, Ebola, Respiratory Syncytial Virus and others. mRNA is not the only new and promising technology.

Let us know if the video is useful and the scientific subjects people want to read about, assuming that Covid-19 cases continue to decline. My thanks to Elias Olsen and Kelly Kandra.

I will write a longer article or teach a course, and there will be more videos, but for the moment, like many people, we are going to see our grandchildren.

Rich Kessin is Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He and Galene Kessin live in Norfolk, Conn.

Email: Richard.Kessin@gmail.com

Website: Richardkessin.com (contains earlier columns and other writings on science). A work in progress.

The Lakeville Journal: /body-scientific

The Berkshire Edge: https://theberkshireedge.com/the-body-scientific--19-vaccines

Video:

Latest News

Donald Francis ‘Frank’ McNally

Donald Francis ‘Frank’ McNally

MILLERTON — Donald Francis “Frank” McNally Jr., passed away peacefully at Vassar Brothers Medical Center on Wednesday Jan. 8, 2025, after a short illness. Frank was a resident of Millerton since 1996. He was born on Jan. 27, 1955, in Cold Spring, New York, at Butterfield Hospital and was raised in Garrison, New York, where he enjoyed exploring and camping in the wilderness of the Hudson Valley, participating in the Boy Scouts as a bugler, and competing as captain of his high school wrestling team.

He was a graduate of James I. O’Neill High School in Highland Falls class of ‘74 and SUNY Cobleskill class of ‘76 where he majored in animal husbandry, specializing in equine science. He then proudly volunteered for the United States Peace Corps where he accepted an assignment to his host country of the Philippines, where he met his wife. Frank would then pursue his lifelong passion for horses and horseback riding on several horse farms in Dutchess County. Later he would work for New York state where he would then retire, spending his time caring for animals, reading, fishing and taking photographs. Frank enjoyed a good laugh with family and friends, while also occasionally winning a game of RISK. Frank was an avid reader, often reading several books a week while in the constant company of his cat.

Keep ReadingShow less

Florence Eugenia Cooper

Florence Eugenia Cooper

NORFOLK — Florence Eugenia Cooper died on Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, at the age of 92 at Geer Lodge in Canaan, Connecticut where she had been a resident for 2 ½ years. She also spent a couple of days a week at the home of her daughter, the artist Hilary Cooper and her husband Chris Crowley, in Lakeville.

Florence (neé Muhas) was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Greek immigrants. She went to local public schools and then to college at Barnard where she was mentored by Professor of Religion Ursula Niebuhr, wife of the philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, who urged her to go to her alma mater St Hugh’s College, Oxford University where she earned a D. Phil degree. Later, she received an M.A. in foreign policy with a specialty in China, at the London School of Economics.

Keep ReadingShow less

Frederick Ralph Scoville II

Frederick Ralph Scoville II

WEST CORNWALL — Frederick Ralph Scoville II, 72, of 243 Town St., died Jan. 7, 2025, at the Waterbury Hospital surrounded by his loving family. Fred was the husband of 45 years to Lynn (Pollard) Scoville. Fred was born in Torrington, son of the late Ralph and Thalia (Hicock) Scoville.

Fred spent his whole life in West Cornwall. He attended Cornwall Consolidated and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. The only time he left was to attend the University of Connecticut for animal science. After school he came home to work with his father on the family farm taking over full-time in 1996 milking dairy cattle and selling hay. His life passion was the farm. He could always be found tinkering on equipment or surveying the neighborhood on his golf cart. The only thing that rivaled the farm was his love of his family. His wife, sons, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren meant the world to Fred.

Keep ReadingShow less

Regional News