21st-Century Scientific Miracles.

Even with vaccines available, the delta variant is having a growing impact in Arkansas.  For the 3rd day in a row, new cases on July 9th topped 1000.  There were 1,155 new cases reported.  Active cases jumped by 673 to 6,605.  There were 497 Covid patients hospitalized, up 16, with 81 on ventilators…… We were supposed to be past this!¹

Last summer, things looked pretty bleak.  Covid cases were rising and a surge was around the corner.

The future only had a couple of options.

1. Stay the course with social distancing, masks and, if needed, lockdowns and quarantines, or
2. Open everything back up and let nature—and Covid-19—take it’s course.  Get the economy and life back on track and let the population achieve herd immunity through infection.

There was the possibility, the potential, for the development of a vaccine. However, historically, vaccine development is a long, complex process with standardized procedures that often takes ten to fifteen years.² The likelihood of creating a vaccine that could be used in the near term appeared slim, though governments around the world promised miracles.

Covid-19 (aka SARS-COV-2) is related to other coronaviruses that cause diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Scientists have been studying these to develop vaccines against them for many years before SARS-COV-2 was discovered.  This helped accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines.³

Three phases of clinical trials are required after a vaccine has been developed.   While these are normally done one at a time in sequence, because of the seriousness of the pandemic, the phases were overlapped to be able to more quickly make the vaccines available if they proved to be safe and effective.  No trial phases were skipped.  The trials included tens of thousands of volunteers with no serious safety concerns shown after more than 8 weeks following vaccination.⁴

Emergency Use Authorization

On February 4, 2020, the HHS Secretary (Alex Azar) determined “that there is a public health emergency that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and security of United States citizens living abroad, and that involves the virus that causes COVID-19” and later declared “that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of drugs and biological products during the COVID-19 pandemic, pursuant to section 564 of the FD&C Act, effective March 27, 2020.”^5,6

The timing of this declaration makes it clear that the federal government was aware early on of the seriousness of the pandemic that was then just beginning to spread.

Since the previous fastest drug from start to distribution—the mumps vaccine—took four years to develop, it’s natural that there would be some apprehension over the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine.  The pandemic, however, spurred unprecedented global cooperation for vaccine research and development, building on the previous coronavirus vaccine research.  Dr. Eric J. Yager, an associate professor of microbiology at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Albany, NY, explained that scientists had been studying coronaviruses for over 50 years and had existing data on the structure, genome, and life cycle of this type of virus. “Research on these viruses established the importance of the viral spike (S) protein in viral attachment, fusion, and entry, and identified the S proteins as a target for the development of antibody therapies and vaccines,” he said, and, “Early efforts by scientists at Oxford University to create an adenovirus-based vaccine against MERS provided the necessary experimental experience and groundwork to develop an adenovirus vaccine for COVID-19.”

There are plenty of authoritative, legitimate sources of information on Covid-19 and the vaccines.  I simply do not understand how people can rely on sources that spread misinformation and outright lies.

Time and technology came together to produce multiple Covid-19 vaccines.  At no other time in human history has the conditions existed that have resulted in these 21st-century scientific miracles.

1. KARK. (2021, July 09). COVID-19 in Arkansas: Third day of more than 1,000 new cases, active case count tops figure from a year ago. Retrieved July 9, 2021, from https://www.kark.com/news/health/coronavirus/covid-19-in-arkansas-third-day-of-more-than-1000-new-cases-active-case-count-tops-figure-from-a-year-ago/
2. Vaccine Development, Testing, and Regulation. (2019). Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation
3. Developing covid-19 vaccines. (2021, March 25). Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/distributing/steps-ensure-safety.html
4. ibid.
5. Commissioner, FDA, Office of the. (Content current as of: 07/07/2021.). Emergency use authorization. Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-legal-regulatory-and-policy-framework/emergency-use-authorization
6. “The Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) authority allows FDA to help strengthen the nation’s public health protections against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats including infectious diseases, by facilitating the availability and use of medical countermeasures (MCMs) needed during public health emergencies.”
7. Solis-Moreira, J. (2020, December 15). COVID-19 vaccine: How was it developed so fast? Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-did-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-quickly#Funding-for-COVID-19-vaccine-research