Here’s a closer look at how COVID-19 vaccine works
It’s been nearly a year since the novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic, and there have been millions of U.S. cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths from the COVID-19 illness.
The federal government is distributing two vaccines it authorized for emergency use in December, one from Pfizer-BioNTech and another from Moderna. A third is under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and more are in the pipeline.
Together, they could vastly improve the availability of still-scarce supplies.
How do vaccines get authorized?
Normally it takes years to secure FDA approval for new drugs and medical devices. Once a product is developed, it must go through three phases of human trials as laid out by the agency to show whether they are safe and effective.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna followed this path for their vaccines, but developed them at a remarkable pace of months instead of years.
They were allowed to condense the time frame for the trials given the pandemic, but regulators say the data received the same level of scrutiny.
The regulators granted both vaccine makers emergency-use authorizations to market their vaccines, a temporary designation that requires them to continue tracking tens of thousands of volunteers for years before they are formally approved.
Other vaccines are expected to follow this path, including one being manfactured in Baltimore for Johnson & Johnson, which recently submitted data to the FDA for authorization.
How effective are these vaccines?
The two authorized vaccines are considered extraordinarily effective at preventing illness due to COVID-19, though it’s not yet known how well they prevent someone from transmitting the virus to others.
The Pfizer vaccine was shown to be about 95% effective and the Moderna vaccine was shown to be about 94% effective. Both require two doses to achieve that level. Some scientists have suggested administering one less-effective dose so the vaccine can be distributed to more people. The CDC has not endorsed that strategy, but officials there say delaying the second dose by up to six weeks is OK.
The two vaccines’ levels of effectiveness are in league with the most effective vaccines, including the measles-mumpsrubella vaccine. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that vaccine is 88% to 97% effective after two doses.
They are far more effective than the annual flu vaccine, which is remade each year to match circulating strains. It’s usually about 40% to 60% effective, though scientists say the flu vaccine has been shown to lessen the severity of illness even if it doesn’t prevent it.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine isn’t expected to be as effective as the other COVID-19 vaccines, but authorities say it will provide strong protections against
severe illness and will be logistically easier to disburse than the other coronavirus vaccines. It requires only one dose and doesn’t need the ultracold storage required by the other two.
How were they developed and how do they work?
The two authorized vaccines are called messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines. They have been studied for years for other purposes such as preventing other viruses and some kinds of cancers.
Vaccine makers, many with a huge infusion of federal money, were able to adapt the method for use against the coronavirus. A handful of U.S. scientists provided vaccine makers with a leg up in that adaptation because they had been studying other coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS after global outbreaks in 2003 and 2015, respectively.
Some of that research served as a platform for the vaccines now authorized and in development.
Standard vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, deploy a live, weakened bit of virus or dead virus to spark an immune response in the body.
The resulting antibodies fight off the real virus when someone later comes in contact with it. Other coronavirus vaccines use variations of this method.
But, the CDC explains, mRNA vaccines instead instruct cells to trigger the immune response.
They do this by using strands of genetic material to tell cells to make a harmless spike protein found on the surface of the virus. The body’s immune system sees the protein as an invader and makes antibodies to fend off the threat.
What are the common side effects and risks?
Doctors say many people will develop some symptoms after receiving a shot, especially the second dose.
They can include fatigue, chills, a low-grade fever and soreness at the vaccination site.
The symptoms typically go away after eight to 12 hours. Doctors say to plan for some time to rest because it’s not clear who will be most heavily affected. And have some acetaminophen, known as Tylenol, on hand.
Those who experience shortness of breath or a rash should seek medical attention. Rarely, a few people have had allergic reactions to the vaccine.
There is no risk of getting the COVID-19 disease from the vaccine.
Full protection takes about two weeks from the second dose, and federal authorities say people should still wear masks and follow other precautions through that time and until most of the population is vaccinated.
Do they work against the newly circulating variants?
Labs around the country are increasingly finding variants of the coronavirus that are far more contagious. One first identified in the United Kingdom, known as B. 1.1.7, is now expected to be the dominant strain by the end of March.
So far, federal health authorities say, the vaccines appear to still be effective against this variant.
The vaccines, however, might be less effective against a variant first found in South Africa but also starting to surface during lab testing in the United States.
Officials say it’s something of a race to see whether the vaccine shots can get into arms fast enough to stem infections. Otherwise, there could be a huge surge in cases.
That prospect led the CDC to recommend that people double down on preventive measures.
The officials also recommend people tighten their masks on their noses and under their chins to reduce air leakage or double up on masks by wearing a surgical mask under a cloth mask to block more of the virus.
While attempting to get the COVID vaccine — a task that required making numerous inquiries to numerous websites instead of just one inquiry to a central website — I took a break for an hour and became a disease data nerd. I wanted to see how Maryland has fared through the pandemic compared to neighboring states.
This wasn’t just a way of killing time between submitting applications for vaccinations, but something I’ve been curious about: Where does one of the wealthiest states in the country, with so many big brains in residence, stack up compared to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware?
There are multiple ways to answer that question, but starting with a basic measure — the number of infections relative to population — Maryland has weathered the crisis better than our bordering states. It’s not a close call.
Hang with me as I run some numbers. In two categories tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — cases of the coronavirus over the last week and over the last year — Maryland appears to be best.
As of Feb. 10, we had 6,085 cases for every 100,000 residents. That sounds like a lot, but it’s better than Virginia (6,338 cases per 100,000), Pennsylvania (6,876) and West Virginia (7,028), and much better than Delaware (8,366).
Over the previous seven days, Maryland had 20.9 cases per 100,000 residents while
Virginia had twice that rate at 41.2. Delaware was second-worst in the region at 35.4 cases for the week. The Pennsylvania and West Virginia rates were both in the high 20s.
There’s only one category where Maryland does not lead among the five states, and that’s the incidence of death from COVID-19. Since the pandemic arrived, we have had 123 deaths per 100,000 Marylanders. More people survived in Virginia, where the death rate stands at 81 per 100,000. The death rates in West Virginia and Delaware have been comparable to Maryland’s.
With 177 deaths per 100,000 residents, Pennsylvania has had the highest death rate in the region, according to the CDC.
There’s one more set of numbers I want to give you that makes Maryland look good: The rate at which people in these five states are testing positive for the virus. The latest data puts Maryland ahead of the pack in this category, too. As of Friday, the Johns Hopkins University tracker had Maryland’s positivity rate at 3.7%. Compare that with Virginia (12.2%) and the rest: Pennsylvania at 8.6%, Delaware at 6.3% and West Virginia at 4.6%.
What does all this mean? It might mean the big decisions about the management of schools, restaurants, businesses and public spaces through the pandemic were probably better here than in the states around us. If you’re scoring elected leaders based on the results I’ve mentioned, then Gov. Larry
Hogan and the people who advised him deserve credit for getting us to this point. Local leaders in Baltimore and the counties deserve props, too.
But my hunch is that what really made the difference is this: Marylanders did not believe President Donald Trump’s rosy predictions — his lies about the coronavirus — and took the threat seriously from the start. We wore masks, maintained social distancing — what the public health professionals told us to do, and probably more so than people in the other states in the region.
The fact that Maryland has one of the best educated populations in the country is no small factor. The state’s impressive medical and educational establishments — along with the thousands of government employees and tech entrepreneurs — constitute an intellectual powerhouse we tend to take for granted.
Which gets me to the vaccine rollout.
This is where Maryland has fared poorly.
The most recent numbers from the CDC show our state with the lowest rate of residents to have received one or more doses of a COVID vaccine so far. West Virginia has done the best in the region — in fact, it’s one of the tops in the nation — with 12,629 people per 100,000 residents getting vaccinated. Maryland, by contrast, had given one or more doses to only 9,318 people for every 100,000 residents over the same period. That’s not good. It’s embarrassing.
One of the reasons has got to be the system the state went with, the one that has me and thousands of other Marylanders making numerous applications to numerous websites instead of to one centralized site.
With all the big brains in this state, we could not have come up with a simpler design, a one-stop model for vaccines?
Trying to sign up continues to be a crap shoot. You hear stories about some people getting a shot — including board members of two hospitals — while others can’t, and it sounds sketchy. So you just shake your head and keep your mask on while you wait.
I understand: It’s great that we have a vaccine, but the problem is supply. We have to be patient. More doses are coming and the state will soon be opening another Super Vax location at M&T Bank Stadium, and I’m fine with that as long as there are hot dogs.
I hope we learn something from this nightmare. I hope we emerge from this mess with a willingness to make a greater investment in education, science and public health, show more respect for the big brains among us and reject stupidity in all forms.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Arrested for leading a march against racial segregation in 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spent days in solitary confinement writing his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” which was smuggled out and stirred the world by explaining why Black people couldn’t keep waiting for fair treatment. Meanwhile, items also were arriving at the jail for King.
A special delivery letter showed up at the jailhouse addressed to King, then a Western Union telegram, and then another and another. A jailer would log each new item in a bound ledger book, which King would then sign. Pages of the old jail log with King’s signature are now going up for auction, with a minimum price of $10,000.
Reportedly saved by an employee at the old jail, which was demolished in 1986, the pages are a previously unknown reminder of King’s time in Birmingham, which the civil rights leader once called “the most segregated city in America.”
The King signatures, a dozen all in ink, are contained on four yellowed pages that have been removed from the original book. The pages also bear the signature of King friend and aide Ralph D. Abernathy, who was arrested during the same march as King on April 12, 1963, for violating a court order banning the demonstration.
Scott Mussell, who works for Pennsylvania-based Hake’s Auctions, said a worker might have been instructed to clean out the old building and, realizing what the log book contained, saved it instead.
Jim Baggett, the head of archives at the city library, said he was unfamiliar with the jail log, but it was entirely
possible a worker saved it from being destroyed.
“We have stuff here that survived because someone pulled it out of the trash,” he said.
Will Seippel’s Atlantabased WorthPoint, which values collectibles and other items online, lined up document experts and signature authenticators to verify that the pages are genuine after being contacted by the current owners, the relatives of a person who was given the sheets by the person who initially saved them.
“They were trying to figure out what they had and whether it was real and what it was worth,” he said. The online auction will end Feb. 24.
King and his Atlantabased Southern Christian Leadership Conference joined with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, led by the Rev. Fred Shuttleworth, in 1963 in a campaign meant to pressure the city’s white leadership to end legalized racial segregation. The city was soon the scene of pickets, mass meetings, a boycott of downtown businesses and lunch counter sit-ins.
The city obtained a court order blocking further demonstrations, but King and Abernathy led a march that ended in their arrest. Held in isolation in the city jail, King wrote his almost 7,000-word treatise in response to a statement published by seven white ministers and a rabbi who called the demonstrations “unwise and untimely.”
Writing in the margins of a newspaper, King penned a defense of the civil rights movement that included the line: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Carried out of the jail by his lawyers and transcribed, the letter initially was distributed on mimeographed sheets before being reprinted in its entirety in pamphlets, magazines, King’s 1964 memoir and newspapers. It is now regarded as one of the greatest defenses of nonviolent protest ever written.
The old jail logs don’t indicate the contents of telegrams and letters King received while incarcerated, and only a historical marker stands now at the site of the building.