Prior to viewing a movie at the Zinema or attending a show at the Renegade Theater, Zeitgeist in Duluth will require attendees to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result from the past 72 hours.
The vaccination needs to have been completed at least 14 days prior, according to the nonprofit's website.
Masks are still required throughout the Zeitgeist Arts Building regardless of vaccine status.
Zeitgeist staff, as well as the Renegade Theater's cast and crew, are 100% vaccinated, the website says.
The first live show since the pandemic began will return to the theater Thursday. The cast and crew are tested weekly and will continue testing throughout the show's run, which ends Aug. 28.
Boise, Idaho Governor Brad Little held a press conference today at Nampa High School to highlight facts about unvaccinated Idahoans getting sick, strain occurring in hospitals,and to urge Idahoans on the fence about receiving the vaccine to get the shot now to protect students ability to learn in their classrooms this school year.
Idaho students are headed back to their classrooms starting next week. As Ive stated from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic,our students need to be able to learn in their classrooms with their teachers and peers.Our main defense in ensuring the new school year is entirely in-person free from outbreaks and quarantines is theCOVID-19 vaccine, Governor Little said.
Governor Little highlighted Idaho-specific facts about COVID activity in the state.
The vaccine slows the spread of the disease, but epidemiologistswith the State of Idaho saythat with low vaccination rates and the highly contagious Delta variantcirculating in Idaho communitieswhich istwice as contagious as the original strain projections indicatecase counts could continue to increase through the fall and exceed last years peak for daily case countsinas soon astwo months.
Just over half of Idahos adult population is vaccinated,with the greatest share of those vaccinated over the age of 65.
I understand there are many who simply will not receive the vaccine under any circumstances,but there are also a lot of others who are on the fence about receiving the vaccine.To those friends and neighbors of ours waiting to receive the vaccine,the time to get the vaccine is now,when our students are going back to school.We can minimize or eliminate disruptions in the delivery of educationas well as sportsand extracurricular activitiesduring this school year if more Idahoans choose to get vaccinatednow. Our younger population cannot receive the vaccine andthey need us the adults tomake the right decision now so they can stay well and have a productive, successful school year, Governor Little said.
Parents of 12- to 17-year-olds are also encouraged to havetheirchildren vaccinated.Apediatrician can helpanswer questions, and parents are encouraged tomake an appointment to discussthe vaccine.
Over 197million Americans have received the vaccine safely.The risk ofseriousside effectsisextremely low. By comparison, the risk of death or hospitalization from the COVID-19 disease is much higher, and its growing.
Idaho hospitals are once again filling up with COVID patients almost all unvaccinated and access to basic healthcare services is getting pinched foreveryone.People with planned surgeries may have those surgeries delayed.People with heart attacks or strokes may find there is no bed available in their local hospital.
Governor Little also noted theimpacts of increased spread on ourworkforce.
We cannot afford to have such a large share of our workforce out sick all at once.Our workforce cannot afford to stay home because schools and day cares shut down due to outbreaks.This threatens Idahos phenomenal economic success, Governor Little said. Our hospitals wont be able to take in the influx of patients.And, importantly, it is not fair to our students who will experience disruptions in their school year.
Governor Little said he isdirecting$30 million toward expandedCOVID-19testingin Idaho K-12 schoolsto helpmeet the need.
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HONOLULU (KITV) -- Investigators with the Hawaii Attorney General's office arrested a father and son on Sunday when they reportedly tried to use fake vaccination cards at a Hawaii airport.
The pair were arrested at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu after flying there from California.
WATCH: Experts warn fake vaccination cards could prolong pandemic, FBI categorizes them as crime
Investigators said Trevor and Norbert Chung were arrested following a tip from someone in the community.
Investigators are working with the Federal Government to identify the source of false vaccine cards.
SEE ALSO: Fake COVID-19 vaccination cards worry college officials
The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
Decades ago I helped organize a conference that brought together vaccine skeptics and public health officials. The debate centered on what governments can and cannot demand from citizens, and what behaviors one can rightly expect from others.
It took place many years before the current coronavirus pandemic, but many things that happened at that conference remind me of our circumstances today. Not least, as a political theorist who also studies social ethics, it reminds me that arguments grounded in self-interest can often be correct but still deeply inadequate.
I recall one participant summarizing her objection to vaccines in the following way: She said that the government demanded that she allow a live biological agent to be injected into her childs body even though it could not guarantee her childs safety. For these reasons, she claimed, she had every right to decide that her child would not receive the vaccine.
This womans objection was driven by her suspicion that the MMR vaccine, for measles, mumps and rubella, caused autism. This claim has been shown, repeatedly and conclusively, to be without merit. Still, she was not entirely wrong. Many vaccines do contain live agents, though they are in a weakened or attenuated state. And while adverse and even serious reactions have been known to occur, such a risk is infinitesimally small. Indeed, the preponderance of evidence shows that the risk of harm or death to the unvaccinated child from infections such as MMR is far greater than any associated with receiving the vaccine.
But more importantly, this parents decision to reject the vaccine affected more than just her child. Because so many parents refuse vaccination for their children, outbreaks of measles have taken place throughout the U.S. In fact, in 2019 the United States reported its highest number of cases of measles in 25 years.
Many individuals are rejecting the COVID-19 vaccine for similar reasons that is, reasons grounded in self-interest. They say that COVID vaccines are experimental, their long-term effects are unknown and that emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration was rushed.
In fact, while the vaccines were given emergency authorization to expedite their availability to the general public, they are not experimental but rather the result of years of already existing research on mRNA vaccines and coronaviruses the family of viruses including SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. And they received authorization only after conclusive evidence showing they were indeed safe.
Those who reject the COVID vaccine also note that many receiving the vaccine have had an adverse reaction, including flu-like symptoms that are short-lived but often quite unpleasant. Cases of anaphylactic shock or blood clots have also happened, but they have been extremely rare, and safeguards on how to provide immediate care are in place for any such eventuality.
Here again the risks associated with the vaccine are extremely small, but for some people, still real. Therefore these individuals apparently decided that they would rather take their chances with the disease itself. Many are young and dont think the disease will affect them, and many more dont trust the doctors, scientists and politicians who they say are pushing them to take the vaccine.
One could readily dispute these claims, too. In fact, rising vaccination rates over the past few weeks show that many people have reevaluated the risks of remaining unvaccinated. Whether these people have seen evidence of the virulence of the delta variant or have seen for themselves that millions of people have taken the vaccine and are completely fine, their evaluation of their own self-interest has changed.
Nevertheless, many others remain adamant that these risks are unacceptable. Like that parent from many years ago, these individuals are not entirely wrong. There are risks associated with getting the vaccine. And knowing these risks, and knowing that they bear the costs of their decision, many Americans believe that they alone have the right to decide. What the government or anyone else wants is beside the point.
But here again, the costs of refusing the vaccine are not borne by the individual alone. Rising case numbers and hospitalizations, renewed restrictions regarding public events, even the emergence of the delta variant itself are happening largely because many millions of Americans chose not to get the vaccine. And for parents of children under 12 who cannot yet receive the vaccine some of whom are immune compromised the thought of returning to school this fall with infection rates again climbing no doubt fills them with dread.
Many would argue that this lack of concern for other people is immoral. The Golden Rule do unto others as you would have others do unto you manifests that concern for the well-being of others is at the core of morality. Those who choose not to take the vaccine ignore this concern and therefore act immorally. But, I would argue that their indifference to the welfare of others is not only immoral, it is also un-American.
Americans are a highly individualistic nation, and the spirit of rugged individualism, or the idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, runs deep in American culture and history. In fact, from the nations very beginning, Americans have accepted the notion that human beings care about themselves and those they love more than they do about other people.
At the time of Americas founding, many contemporaries believed that a democracy is possible only if citizens love their country more than themselves. But Americas founders rejected this idea. Human beings are not angels, James Madison said. The founders accepted the reality of human selfishness and developed institutions especially the checks and balances among the three branches of government whereby peoples natural selfishness could be directed toward socially useful ends.
But neither Madison nor any of the other founders believed that human beings were merely selfish. Nor did they believe that a democracy could be sustained on selfishness alone. The Federalist Papers were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in support of the U.S. Constitution drafted in 1787. In Federalist 55, Madison presents this summation of human nature:
As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.
Yes, Madison says, human beings are selfish, and one must not ignore that reality when one is deciding how to run a society. But people are not merely selfish. We are also capable of acting with honesty and integrity and of thinking for the good of the whole rather than merely ourselves.
More, Madison argued that this other side of human nature, this concern for others, had to be operative if democracy were to survive. In fact, he insisted that, more than any other form of government, a democracy depended on virtuous citizens. Speaking at the ratifying convention for the U.S. Constitution in his home state of Virginia, Madison said:
Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks no forms of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
Madison lived through the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. He even advised President George Washington about how he might address this health emergency. But there was no vaccine, nor even an understanding of what caused the epidemic.
While we dont know what Madison would have said about a vaccine, we do know what President Dwight D. Eisenhower said after the development of the polio vaccine. Eisenhowers words likewise affirm the idea that our democracy requires that we show concern for one another.
We all hope that the dread disease of poliomyelitis can be eradicated from our society. With the combined efforts of all, the Salk vaccine will be made available for our children in a manner in keeping with our highest traditions of cooperative national action, he said.
Because of Madison and the other founders, the United States is a free and democratic society. Within very broad limits, Americans all have the right to make their own decisions. In some cases, Americans may even have the right to ignore the impact of their decision on others.
But a free society demands more of its citizens than mere selfishness. Political institutions can help direct and mitigate the effects of this natural human inclination to selfishness.
Throughout history, Americas leaders have recognized that without concern for others, without the highest tradition of cooperative national action, democracy is in peril. People who decide not to get vaccinated must understand that their actions are not just selfish, they are un-American.
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CNN
As experts race to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 by encouraging vaccinations and mask wearing, hospital systems in a handful of states are now straining to keep up with the surge.
Eight states, many of which have lagged the national average for vaccinations, have Covid-19 patients that account for at least 15% of their overall hospitalizations: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Of all Covid-19 hospitalizations, these eight states combined totals make up approximately 51% of patients, though the states account for only around 24% of the nations population, according to Census data.
In the past week, Florida has had more Covid cases than all 30 states with the lowest case rates combined. And Florida and Texas alone have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Thursday during a White House briefing.
The percentages of Covid-19 patients in ICUs are even worse, with Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi approaching half of ICU beds in use for such patients, HHS data from Thursday show.
Louisiana and Mississippi each announced on Thursday their highest number of Covid-19 hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic.
Mississippi on Friday reported 5,023 new cases, another daily record, the state Department of Health said. Of the new cases, 98% of those are in unvaccinated people, the states dashboard shows.
In Florida, Brevard County officials issued an urgent plea this week for residents to try to avoid using ambulance services for nonemergency calls or going to hospitals for Covid-19 tests.
First responders and departments are feeling the effects of the Delta coronavirus variant surge throughout the country.
In Memphis, Tennessee, emergency departments are overworked due to the pandemic, with August having the potential to be the busiest month in the history of the citys fire department, Fire Chief Gina Sweat said.
And Chief Medical Officer Dr. Geoff Lifferth at Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin, Tennessee, said the hospital had no more open beds. As an ER doc and a healthcare administrator, this past week has been one of the most exhausting and disheartening of my career, he said in an emotional Facebook post.
In Wisconsin, Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary in the states Health Department, warned Thursday that the state could experience a crisis similar to the one happening now in Florida.
We find ourselves in a situation that we hoped was in the past we risk our hospital systems being overwhelmed, again, just as they were last November.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Clinicians work on intubating a Covid-19 patient Tuesday in the Intensive Care Unit at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Health officials continue to stress that widespread vaccinations are needed to temper the effects of the surge in the weeks ahead.
Of the nearly 1,500 now in a hospital for Covid-19, more than 1,300 are unvaccinated, the Mississippi Department of Health said on Thursday.
More than 99.99% of people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 have not had a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization or death, according to a CNN analysis of CDC data. Of the more than 164 million people in the US fully vaccinated as of August 2, fewer than 0.001% of those individuals 1,507 people died from Covid-19.
About three-quarters of all reported breakthrough cases were among seniors age 65 or older. Of the people who died, 1 in 5 passed away from something other than Covid-19, even though they had a breakthrough case of the virus, according to the CDC.
With the efficacy of vaccines demonstrated, the FDA on Thursday authorized an additional third dose to be administered to people with compromised immune systems.
Around 59.2% of all Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 50.4% are fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to the CDC.
With the school year getting underway, the debate over mask mandates among parents, educators and political leadership continues nationwide, as children under age 12 are not yet eligible for Covid-19 vaccines.
Over the past few days, heated scenes have played out in Georgia and Tennessee as local school boards and officials considered mask mandates for staff and students, only to be met with loud opposition from some parents.
In suburban Atlanta, more than 550 cases have been reported this week in the Cobb County School District. Cobb County does not mandate masks but does strongly encourage them for students and staff, according to the districts public health guidelines posted on its website.
In Florida, three teachers and a teaching assistant in Broward County died from Covid-19-related complications this week, the teachers union president, Anna Fusco, told CNN. The educators died in a roughly 24-hour span between Monday night and Wednesday morning, she said.
Broward County School Board Chair Rosalind Osgood responded Friday on CNN to a question about reports that three of the educators were unvaccinated.
I was also told they were unvaccinated, she said.
The district is using money to encourage staff members to get vaccinated.
Broward County has had 138 employees test positive for Covid-19 since August 1, according to the systems Covid dashboard, which was updated on Thursday.
In Texas, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins referenced his temporary restraining order against the governors mask ban at a news conference Friday morning.
Our hospitals and our people desperately need some time to get bed capacity and doctor capacity up so their hospitals wont be overrun, he said.
In Dallas we have zero ICU beds left for children. That means if your childs in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect or something and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we dont have one. Your child will wait for another child to die.
CNNs Rebekah Riess, Lauren Mascarenhas, Deidre McPhillips, Christina Maxouris, Gregory Lemos, Hannah Sarisohn, Abbey Clark and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.
In 1988, Richard Lenski, a thirty-one-year-old biologist at UC Irvine, started an experiment. He divided a population of a common bacterium, E. coli, into twelve flasks. Each flask was kept at thirty-seven degrees Celsius, and contained an identical cocktail of water, glucose, and other nutrients. Each day, as the bacteria replicated, Lenski transferred several drops of each cocktail to a new flask, and every so often he stored samples away in a freezer. His goal was to understand the mechanics of evolution. How quickly, effectively, creatively, and consistently do microorganisms improve their reproductive fitness?
Lenskis flasks produced about six new generations of E. coli a day; the bacteria woke up as babies and went to bed as great-great-great-grandparents. In this way, Lenski and his team have studied more than seventy thousand generations of E. coli over thirty-three years. Compared with their distant ancestors, the latest versions of the bacterium reproduce seventy per cent faster; it once took them an hour to double their ranks, but now they can do it in less than forty minutes. Different populations have taken different paths to enhanced fitness, but, after decades, most have arrived at reproduction rates within a few percentage points of one another.
Lenskis Long-Term Evolution Experiment, or L.T.E.E., as its called, has yielded fundamental insights into the mutational capabilities of microorganisms. For his work, Lenski, now in his sixties and at Michigan State University, has received a MacArthur genius grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Im not sure I can tell you how its affected my thinking, because Im not sure I can conceive of being in this field without this experiment existing, Michael Baym, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard Medical School, recently told Discover.
Three of the experiments key findings are especially relevant today. The first is that, in general, there were diminishing returns to mutation over time: the bacteria made many of their most reproductively advantageous moves early on. A second finding, however, was that the bacteria never stopped getting fitter. Seventy thousand generations in, theyre still finding new ways to improve, albeit at a somewhat slower rate. I had sort of imagined that things would have flatlined, Lenski told me recently, when we spoke over Zoom. But there seem to be endless possibilities for tinkering and progress. If there is a hard limit, its so, so far away that its impractical to consider on an experimental timescalemaybe even a geological timescale.
Lenski has a friendly, expressive face, with pale blue eyes and a neat beard; his voice pulses with excitement when he considers a provocative question or explains the implications of his research. He told me about a third major finding: in 2003, some fifteen years and thirty thousand generations into the experiment, Lenski arrived at his lab to find that, overnight, a flask that was normally fairly translucent had turned cloudy. The bacteria it contained had experienced an explosive surge in growth. Normally, E. coli eat mainly glucose, but this population had unlocked an entirely new source of energy: a chemical compound called citrate. The capacity to metabolize citrate is so unusual that no population in the study had developed it until that point, and none have attained it since. Its as if a family of humans could suddenly drink salt water.
The emergence of a citrate-eating lineage suggests that exceptionally rare, profoundly consequential evolutionary leaps are possible long after the low-hanging fruit has been picked. How can something like this happen, and yet be so rare that it never happens again? Lenski asked. One possibility is that you have a super-rare mutation that is just so unique that its only happened once in the entire history of this experiment. Alternatively, maybe you need a whole set of earlier changes, so that you set up a genetic background where an ordinary mutation can allow this new function. I think its both: this was an unusual mutation, and it could only produce growth on citrate because there were specific genetic changes that preceded it.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has already had one citrate moment: the instant, probably sometime in 2019 but possibly earlier, when it developed the ability to leap into humans. Since then, the virus has accumulated innumerable mutations, some of which allow it to generate copies of itself more efficientlyby altering how it binds to our cells, for instance, or by finding new ways to slip past our immune systems. Its a process that has occurred with every infectious disease in historymeasles, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, influenza, and untold others. The difference with the coronavirus is that the world is now watching every mutational move as it happens.
During this pandemic, weve developed and deployed vaccines in real time. Meanwhile, SARS-CoV-2 is replicating not in a dozen flasks but in tens of millions of people, some of whom have been immunized, all of whom exert selective pressure for the virus to find new, more efficient replication strategies. The virus will continue to mutate every moment of every day, for years, for decades. The fear is that it will hit upon a second citrate moment: a mutation, or set of mutations, that enables it to circumvent our vaccines, which so far have proved spectacularly effective and resilient. For those who remain unvaccinatedthe majority of humankindthere is also the horrifying prospect of a variant that is vastly more contagious or deadly. Every few months, we learn of a version of the virus that seems somehow worse: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. The coronavirus appears destined to march its way through the Greek alphabeta prizefighter getting quicker, slicker, stronger with each opponent. What are the limits to its evolutionary fitness? Are they knowable? And, if so, how close are we to reaching them?
These were the questions on my mind as I spoke with experts in an effort to understand the future of the pandemic. With questions so complex, its helpful to start by figuring out what, exactly, we want to know. For each new coronavirus variant, we want to find out if its more transmissible, if it will make us sicker, and if it will more effectively get around our immune defenses. On that last front, we want to understand two more questions: How much will it succeed in hiding from our antibodies (which recognize and bind to the virus, preventing infection) and from our T cells (which recognize chopped-up viral fragments displayed by infected cells, and specialize not in preventing infection but in controlling and terminating it).
Roberto Burioni, a physician and professor at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, in Milan, has been called the most famous virologist in Italy; he has written about the prospects for a final variant, a version of the coronavirus that has reached maximum transmissibility, and which becomes the dominant strain, experiencing only occasional, minimal variations. As Burioni sees it, there are three potential futures for the coronavirus. The firstthe most optimistic for usis one in which the virus simply cant evolve its way around the vaccines. This is not an unlikely possibility. Many virusesmeasles, mumps, rubella, polio, smallpoxhave never meaningfully circumvented their vaccines, and so far the best of our current jabs have remained remarkably protective against new coronavirus variants, including Delta.
A second possibility is that the virus will partially evade our vaccine-generated immune defenses while paying a price, becoming less infectious or lethal. In order for the coronavirus to hide from our antibodies, it has to change aspects of the key components recognized by our immune systems, including the spike protein; those changes could end up diminishing the proteins ability to bind to the receptors it needs to infect cells. We can consider, for example, the Beta and Gamma variants, which exhibit some level of immune evasion but havent become as infectious as Alpha or Delta. In the nineteen-nineties, H.I.V. experienced such a fate, when it hit upon a mutation known as M184V, which conferred resistance to the antiviral drug lamivudine. On the surface, this was a setback, but doctors soon learned that patients with the M184V variant had lower viral loads, suggesting that the mutation also reduced how efficiently the virus replicated inside the body. It became common for patients with H.I.V. to continue taking lamivudine even after resistance emerged, in part to select for the variant with a lower replication rate.
The third future is the most concerning: the virus could accumulate mutations that allow it to circumvent immunity without suffering a major reduction in transmissibility or lethality. This would require it to open up a new evolutionary spacea citrate moment. Even in this scenario, Burioni told me, were in a fortunate position: we can quickly modify our vaccines to confront new variants. At the same time, the manufacturing and distribution challenges facing those variant-specific boosters would be colossal; were struggling to fully vaccinate even a quarter of the worlds population with the vaccines we already have.
Vaccination is the most fundamental difference between Lenskis experiment and our reality. In Lenskis flasks, the environment is held constant; in the pandemic, we are doing everything we can to change it. A virus evolves one set of weapons when the world is immune-nave, and others as parts of the global population become fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, andif immunity wanesformerly vaccinated. Different traits become more or less important in different settings. If youre a tennis fan, you might bet on Nadal on clay, Federer on grass, and Djokovic on a hard court. The question of whether a virus has reached something like peak fitness is inescapably linked to where, when, and whom its playing.
There is such a thing as peak fitness within a particular landscape, Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease researcher at the Scripps Research Institute, told me. The problem is that the landscape keeps changing. That puts very strong selective pressure on the virus. The Beta and Gamma variants evolved in areas with high levels of prior infection, and so settled on mutations that offered them gains in immune escape but not transmissibility. The Delta variant, by contrast, emerged in India, which had relatively low vaccination levels; its goal was to spread as fast and as far as possible. Although it may be somewhat more immune-evasive and lethal, Deltas defining feature is its extreme contagiousness.
Some scientists argue that there are strict limits on how effectively the virus can slip past our immune defenses while retaining its infectiousness. Our antibodies recognize the specific parts of the virus that it uses to enter cells; the virus may alter these, but in doing so it may become a less effective invader. There are certainly limits, Andersen told me. We just have no idea where they are. The fundamental question is: How tolerant is the virus to these mutations? Can it still do what it needs to donamely, enter the cellwith a substantially mutated spike protein? Coronaviruses are generalists: they can bind to ACE-2 receptors, their ports of entry into cells, in many ways, across many species. We often use a lock-and-key model to understand how a protein binds to a receptor, Andersen said. That doesnt tell the whole story here: coronaviruses have shown they have many keys that can open the same lock.
Tyler Starr, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, shares Andersens concerns. Starr recently led an ambitious project mapping all possible mutations to a key part of the spike protein. He wanted to know how the proteins structureand, therefore, its affinity for ACE-2changes as each amino acid in its receptor-binding sites mutated. The findings were not terribly reassuring. The big picture is that there is not that much biological constraint, Starr said. Theres a ton of tolerated mutational space that the virus can take while trying to evade immunity. Its quite flexible. Some researchers have seen as good news the fact that many variants share similar mutations despite having evolved separatelya phenomenon known as convergent evolution. According to one view, this means that the virus has a limited toolbox from which to work. According to another, these are only the easiest and earliest mutational options; future variants could hit upon more innovative ways to enhance transmissibility and evade immune defenses. The situation is further complicated by the fact that, unlike in Starrs experiment, the real-world virus isnt limited to one change at a time: it can combine multiple mutations to vastly expand its evolutionary space.
Still, there is reason for optimism. As James Somers explained in this magazine, last year, the human immune system is staggeringly complex and, over millennia, has honed countless defenses against microscopic intruders. And as Katherine Xue wrote, last month, it is especially effective when it has previously encountered a pathogen. In 2009, when the H1N1 influenza strain emerged, it had a curious feature: it caused more severe illness in younger people than older people. Globally, four in five H1N1 deaths were estimated to have occurred in people under sixty-five. (Typically, some seventy to ninety per cent of flu deaths occur in older adults.) It turned out that many older people had likely been exposed to a relative of the strain decades agoand that their immune systems, remembering that fight, were prepared for the next one.
Regardless of how drastically they mutate, new coronavirus variants will probably have more in common with the original SARS-CoV-2 than with SARS-CoV-1, the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003. Even so, the blood of COVID-19 survivors has the potential to neutralize the 2003 strain. The vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, similarly, appear to generate huge numbers of antibodies that work against SARS-CoV-1 in those who have also been infected with COVID-19. These two viruses span a really large evolutionary distance, Starr told me. The fact that the same antibodies bind to both of them should give us some confidence. With new coronavirus variants, we may see a partial decrease in immunity, but, given the polyclonal response, Starr saidthe fact that vaccines generate not one type of antibody but manywhen one set of antibodies drops the rope, another will pick it up. I dont think there will ever be a variant that completely escapes our immune systems. Were never going to wipe the slate clean and be back to a totally nave population. Over time, the infections we do get will be more likely to be mild or asymptomatic. Whether that process takes a year, five years, ten years, or longer, I dont know.
Theres a growing consensus among health experts: Covid-19 may never go away. Well likely always have some coronavirus out there, infecting people and, hopefully only in rare cases, getting them seriously ill. The realistic goal is to defang the virus make it less deadly not eliminate it entirely.
This is not a surrender to the virus. For a long time, weve lived with the seasonal flu, a family of viruses that kills up to tens of thousands of Americans each year. While we can and should take steps to mitigate the risks of the flu (including getting vaccinated for it every year), weve never been willing to shut down society or close in-person schooling to fully eradicate it. Americans have accepted some level of risk to continue living normally.
The same will likely be true with Covid-19. The highly transmissible delta variant appears to have cemented this possibility, showing the coronavirus will continue to spread even in states and countries with higher vaccination rates.
If you go back to the earlier days of the pandemic, the original hope with vaccines was more modest. Previously, the Food and Drug Administration set the standard for an acceptable Covid-19 vaccine at 50 percent efficacy. The expectation was that the vaccine wouldnt stop all cases of Covid-19, but would at least reduce the severity of the disease. As Baylor Colleges Peter Hotez put it at the time, Even if its not the best vaccine, it still could prevent me from going to the hospital or worse.
Yet somewhere along the way perhaps with the news the vaccines were far more effective than expected that message has been lost. And now anything short of perfection is perceived as a failure.
Consider the recent study, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The initial headlines about the study focused on the fact that three-fourths of cases tracked in the study were among vaccinated people, showing the virus spread in a very vaccinated community. The implication, propped up by the CDCs new guidance that vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in public, was that the delta variant can spread at a high level among even the people who got their shots.
But if you dig into the details of the outbreak, they revealed some very good news for vaccinated people. Among the more than 1,000 cases so far linked to Provincetown, there have only been seven reported hospitalizations (some unvaccinated) and no deaths.
If this was 2020, given overall hospitalization and death rates, the outbreak would have likely produced roughly 100 hospitalizations and 10 deaths.
The Provincetown outbreak, then, showed that the vaccines had worked to defang the coronavirus to make it more like the flu.
We should cheer, Amesh Adalja at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told me. The Provincetown outbreak, contrary to what the press reported, was evidence not of the vaccines failure but of their smashing success.
In short: Pay attention to hospitalizations and deaths, not just cases.
There are concerns about long Covid lingering effects in those infected, like overwhelming fatigue. Still, experts say serious long-term symptoms after a Covid-19 infection seem to be fairly rare (though this issue is still being studied). And, at any rate, these kinds of long-term symptoms arent unique to the coronavirus; they happen, for one, with seasonal flu.
While we still have to get more people vaccinated, at a certain point well have to acknowledge weve done what we can. It might not be ideal, but we can learn to live with a vaccine-weakened version of Covid-19 hopefully not too unlike how weve long dealt with the flu.
A new, little-understood variant of the coronavirus has arrived in North Texas. Doctors at UT Southwestern Medical Center have detected five cases of the so-called lambda variant in patient samples taken at the center between early June and July 18.
This represents what happens when there is continued viral replication and spread across the entire world, said Dr. Jeffrey SoRelle, a pathologist at UT Southwesterns genomic sequencing lab, which has analyzed more than 1,000 samples since the start of 2021.
Little is known about how contagious the lambda variant is or the severity of illness it can cause. Two recent studies, neither of which has been peer-reviewed, found it to be more contagious than older versions of the coronavirus and more resistant to antibodies generated by vaccination.
But SoRelle and other experts say vaccines available in the U.S. remain effective against it.
Lambda was first identified in Peru last December, according to the World Health Organization. It now makes up a majority of cases there.
Since last year, lambda has spread quickly through parts of South America, including Chile and Ecuador. The World Health Organization designated it a variant of interest in June, meaning that it has caused significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters in multiple countries.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet followed suit with its own designation. In the U.S., lambda accounted for just .1% of new cases in the last four weeks, according to a database for scientists tracking coronavirus variants.
SoRelle said he is less concerned about lambda than about the delta variant, which now accounts for 95% of new COVID cases in the Dallas area. By some estimates, delta is more than twice as contagious as older versions of the coronavirus. The lambda variant, however, remains at a very low rate of transmission, said SoRelle.
And studies show that vaccines remain effective against it as well as the delta variant. The two recent studies, one conducted by researchers at New York Universitys Grossman School of Medicine and another by researchers in Japan, showed that lambda is about two or three times as resistant to antibodies generated by vaccination as older strains of the virus, said SoRelle.
However, that difference is not enough to erode the protection of vaccines.
Its statistically significant, but not clinically significant, he said. Other concerning variants, including beta, first identified in South Africa, and gamma, first identified in Brazil, are seven- to 30-times more resistant to vaccines.
We find that antibodies raised by vaccination nicely neutralize the lambda variant, said Nathaniel Landau, a microbiologist at New York University in an email. His team tested antibodies generated by the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines against the virus.
This means that the vaccines will provide excellent protection against this new variant, he said. These findings yet again provide more reason to get vaccinated.
In fact, there are some signs that lambda may be plateauing on the world stage rather than increasing in prevalence -- outcompeted, perhaps, by delta. One coronavirus database appears to show it growing less common in Peru, though recent information is incomplete, scientists said.
The same is true locally.
A handful of lambda cases have been detected in Texas for quite some time now - with no evidence they have been growing significantly, said Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, who tracks coronavirus variants across the globe.
It would be interesting to know if there is information about the travel history of those whove tested positive for lambda, she said. My guess would be that a number of these might be imported from South America, and that there might be limited local spread.
The take-home message from UT Southwesterns findings, said SoRelle, is that the coronavirus will continue to change and evolve as long as it is being transmitted person-to-person. If we want to stop hearing about all these different variants, he said, vaccination is the best way to keep from creating them..
With the CDC estimating that the delta variant accounts for more than 90% of new COVID cases in the U.S., scientists are still learning more about what makes this variant different from prior versions of the virus.
There are dozens of COVID-19 variants. Some emerge and quickly fade away. Others emerge and sweep the globe. The delta variant first emerged in India in December 2020 and quickly became the dominant strain there and then in the United Kingdom.
It was first detected in the United States in March 2021 and proved so dominant it supplanted the prior strain, called the alpha variant, within a few short weeks.
Now, experts say there's good news and bad news when it comes to this new variant.
Here's what we know now:
1. The delta variant is more contagious than earlier strains of COVID
Delta is more contagious because it sheds more virus into the air, making it easier to reach other people," said Dr. Loren Miller, associate chief of infectious disease at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Researcher at Lundquist Institute in Torrance, CA .
"There is also some evidence that the virus can more easily attach to human cells in the respiratory tract, Miller said. This means that smaller amounts of virus [particles] are needed to cause infection compared to the original strain.
A 3D model shows the structure of the Covid-19 virus.
2. It could cause more serious illness in unvaccinated persons, but scientists don't know for sure.
Scientists are racing to study the severity of the delta variant in real time. Until more studies are verified by a panel of scientific experts or gain peer-approval," public health officials cannot definitively say for sure that it does cause more serious illness.
Here is what we know so far.
One peer-reviewed study in Scotland looked at over 19,000 confirmed COVID cases between April to June 2021. Scientists were able to differentiate between the delta variant and the alpha variant by molecular testing for one of multiple mutated genes known as the S gene.
About 7,800 COVID cases and 130 hospitalized patients had the delta strain confirmed by presence of the gene. Scientists noted that there was an increased risk for hospitalization in patients with delta when adjusting for common factors such as age, sex, underlying health conditions, and time of disease.
Another recent study awaiting peer approval in Singapore, noted that the delta variant was significantly associated with increased need for oxygenation, admission to an intensive care unit, and death when compared to the alpha variant.
Similarly, a Canadian study awaiting peer approval looked at over 200,000 confirmed COVID cases and found that the delta variant was more likely to cause hospitalization, ICU admission and death.
Its hard to know whether delta is in fact making people sicker or if it is just affecting more vulnerable, unvaccinated populations with high case numbers and overburdened healthcare systems.
3. Delta is now the dominant variant in the US and around the globe.
COVID cases are skyrocketing again in the U.S., particularly where vaccination uptake has been particularly slow.
According to the CDC, more than 90% of COVID cases in the U.S. are currently caused by the delta variant. We know that there is a lot of Delta out there from the public health authorities who regularly survey for delta [and other strains] using special tests called molecular typing said Miller.
Lab Assistant Tammy Brown dons PPE in a lab where she works on preparing positive Covid tests for sequencing to discern variants that are rapidly spreading throughout the United States at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, April 9, 2021.
4. COVID vaccines still work against the delta variant.
The majority of currently hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated," said Dr. Abir Abby Hussein, clinical infectious disease assistant professor and associate medical director for infection prevention and control at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Wash.
Studies show that vaccines still dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, though the delta variant may be more likely than prior variants to cause asymptomatic or mild illness among vaccinated people.
Still, even amid the delta surge, this is still a pandemic of the unvaccinated, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Although there are rare cases of severe breakthrough infections that require hospitalization that can occur in persons with a weakened immune system," Miller said. This comes in time for the new guidelines for booster COVID shots in immunocompromised patients.
5. The delta variant surge is hitting younger, unvaccinated people harder
More COVID cases are being reported in teens, young and middle-age adults. That's not because delta is inherently more dangerous for younger people -- but rather, because younger people are less likely to be fully vaccinated.
Hussein explains that this is likely due to early vaccination efforts to vaccinate older high-risk people, particularly those who live in nursing homes. According to the CDC, more than 80% of adults over the age of 65 have been fully vaccinated and more than 90% of adults over 65 have had one dose (of a two-dose vaccine).
Unfortunately, many younger adults have not been vaccinated, resulting in this shift to younger hospitalized patients," Hussein said.
Collectively, experts agree that the delta variant poses a new threat. Stopping transmission is the key to controlling all variants, not just delta. The best way for everyone to protect themselves against delta includes tools that are already at our disposal -- vaccination, masking, social distance and hand washing.
While we all want to return to a state of normal, Miller said sticking to these basic messages is a very powerful way to prevent COVID transmission and protect yourself.
Jess Dawson, M.D., a Masters of Public Health candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
