I’ve heard that kids are resistant to COVID-19. What’s going on?
No, kids are not resistant, but the young ones do get sick much less often. Recently, a huge study of over 60,000 people in Korea told us how kids fared in that country. First of all, those roughly 10 and older didn’t fare much differently from adults. But the story was different for younger children. These kids were far less likely to come down with COVID-19, in fact nearly 20-fold less likely. Those that did get the disease were also less likely to pass it to others, that is, they were 2 to 3-fold less infectious. So, the epidemic is far less likely to spread widely via young children. We don’t know why this is so.
I’ve been hearing a lot about vaccines, both promising and depressing. What’s going on?
Yes, press reports have been whipsawing between breathless “it’s coming soon” breakthroughs, spawned by drug company press releases, and alarming studies saying COVID-19 antibodies seem to disappear. But most of this is just background noise; vaccine development has been going just a bit faster than expected. Human trials of several promising vaccines have started and that’s good news. Nonetheless, it still looks like it your shot will likely be available no sooner than some time in 2021. Here’s why.
You need to remember that there are 4 steps to deploying a vaccine (see post 9): science, human tests, production, jab. So far, all the vaccines are either in the science or early testing phase. One important new development is financial rather than scientific. Some governments have decided to pay drug companies to manufacture a few promising vaccines before we even know if they will work. So, if one of these does work, it should be in the fridge waiting for us, saving months.
But testing of all vaccines continues to be slow, towards the twin goals of determining safety and effectiveness. Controversial challenge trials could accelerate the process but these have not (yet) been approved; recall that this is where volunteers are vaccinated and then deliberately infected with COVID-19 to see if they are immune. Without these, we need to wait until chance encounters infect a small fraction of huge groups of vaccinated volunteers and then see if the ones who get the virus get sick.
Besides looking for immunity against COVID-19, side effects are a key concern that slows testing. Think of it this way, what if one in 10,000 people develops a bad side effect 6 months after vaccination? That seemingly small problem would correspond to 100,000 people getting sick from the side effect among the billion or so likely to receive the vaccine. You might not know about this problem until hundreds of thousands of volunteers had been vaccinated. Is this a level of risk that we are willing to tolerate in the COVID-19 emergency? Who will decide? And don’t forget, you would need to wait at least 6 months for such a side effect to show – slow, slow, slow.
Now let’s look at the reports that say, yes, our bodies can make protective antibodies, but then they gradually disappear from our blood. This can happen, especially to those who were infected but never got very sick. But a central reason we become immune is that our body stores memory cells against a disease; when it strikes a second time these cells rapidly produce powerful antibodies to fight the disease (see post 9). The reports of antibodies disappearing did not look directly for memory cells and other studies suggest that these form just fine. It’s still early days but it seems that a COVID-19 vaccine should work to induce protective antibodies, but that booster shots might be required. Given the urgency of stopping the pandemic we might not know exactly how long the protection will last until mass vaccination has already begun.
With all this in mind, most American and European scientists expect the first vaccine to be available some time in 2021. There could possibly be a Chinese vaccine earlier, especially since their Military is involved in its development. But the Chinese government continues to suppress bad news related to the virus and so Western regulatory agencies are likely to look very, very closely before giving approval. So even though COVID-19 vaccine development is perhaps the biggest scientific effort in history we will need to wait.
And finally –
Please stay safe and remember that the keys to protecting yourself are ventilation and masks. If you are meeting others, do so outside as much as possible, so that the virus mist can float away. Avoid poorly ventilated public indoor spaces and remember that the virus mist lingers there even after the people have departed. If you must be in such spaces, speak up and ask that windows be opened. Be sure that your mask fits tightly. And as I said in the last post, if you are returning to work (or school) ask about the building’s ventilation system – this is much more important indoors than constant cleaning.
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Stay tuned and stay healthy.
Jay Gralla
Covid19: The Science Explained 