Its time for a more nuanced discussion about the timing of a coronavirus vaccine and what happens when it arrives. Bloomberg Businessweek assesses the biggest challenges in the global hunt, from the patent race to anti-vaxxers. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte expects to be inoculated with Russias controversial, unproven vaccine, while the best hope for mass production may come from a manufacturer in India. For now, infection flare-ups from Australia to Japan show that isolation is probably the only sure way to stop a resurgence.
The S&P 500 briefly topped a record this week, and Goldman Sachs sees more room to rise. Both Apple and Tesla announced stock splits to make their lofty shares attainable again. Meanwhile, U.S. consumer sentiment remains weak, and smaller firms are being shut out of the credit boom.
Former Vice President Joe Biden made a smart choice by choosing Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, Michael R. Bloomberg writes in an op-ed. The Trump campaign tried to attack her for being too liberal and too moderate all at the same time, while Harriss Indian connections sparked a social media frenzy. Bloomberg Green writes that shes more driven by climate justice than climate change.
Senator Kamala Harris.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America
Ubers warning that it may shut down in California follows its textbook legal strategy. Lyft reported its worst performance as a public company, while Airbnbs second-quarter revenue fell 67% as it plans an IPO before years end.
A recent crime surge in New York City is the last straw for some well-off residents who now plan to flee, leading to a rush on upstate property deals and a plunge in Manhattan rents. About three-quarters of students in the city will attend school from one to three days a week in September.
Google has added a set of pandemic-related questions for anyone planning a trip, but no one should expect global travel to bounce back soon. And if you choose to stay close, heres a guide to the best bikes and re-imagined nightlife where robots might replace bartenders.
Memes from adherents of the scattershot, far-right conspiracy theories known cumulatively as QAnon have made their way into the social media accounts of people like Michael Flynn and White House social media adviser Dan Scavino. Family members, rather than social media companies, may be the last line of defense as some true believers try to go mainstream.
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By Arthur Allen, Kaiser Health News
Thousands of letters stuffed with money flooded Jonas Salks mailbox the week after his polio vaccine was declared safe and effective in 1955. Everybody wanted his vaccine. Desperate parents clogged doctors phone lines in search of the precious elixir; drug companies and doctors diverted doses to the rich and famous.
Some of the first batches of the vaccine were disastrously botched, causing 200 cases of permanent paralysis. That barely dented public desire for the preventive. Marlon Brando even asked to play Salk in a movie.
Eight years later, with polio a fading threat, the first measles vaccines went on sale. Measles had killed more than 400 children the year before and caused permanent brain damage in thousands more. Interest in the vaccine was modest. Its creator, Maurice Hilleman, was never lionized as Salk had been.
People felt, Whats the big deal? I had measles; why does my kid need a vaccine? It was a very difficult sell, said Walter Orenstein, an Emory University professor who headed the national immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1988 to 2004.
When a coronavirus vaccine becomes available, will it be met with a roaring ovation, like the polio vaccine, or communal yawning, like the measles shot? Or some strange hybrid of the two? Americans trust in authority, affordable access to the vaccine, and a sense of solidarity will determine the result, said Orenstein and other public health veterans and historians.
Perceptions of particular diseasesand vaccinesreflect the seriousness of the diseases themselves, but popular values, culture, human risk assessment, and politics all play important roles. Acceptance of public health measuresbe they face masks or vaccinesis never entirely determined through a rational balancing of risk and benefit.
We can see that in the history of national campaigns for new vaccines meant to vanquish a scourge. No disease was more feared in the mid-20th century than polio. With the possible exception of AIDS, no disease since has been as feared until the arrival of COVID-19.
The polio vaccine was one of the few the public greeted eagerly. Diseases like measles and whooping cough were familiar childhood afflictions. In most years they killed more children than polio, but polio, which put people in iron lungs and leg braces, was visible in ways that an infants death certificate, tucked away in a drawer, could never be.
Vaccines are often a hard sell, since they prevent rather than cure disease and seem scary even though they are generally quite safe. Since vaccines must be widely used to prevent outbreaks, successful vaccination campaigns rely heavily on trust in those who sell, recommend, and administer the medicines. And trust in science, government, and business has not always been in steady supply.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when public health laws were in flux, authorities battling smallpox epidemics would often send vaccinators out with police to enforce the jab. Theyd enter factories where cases had been reported, lock the doors, and frog-march the workers through a vaccination line. The workers resistance was not unmerited; the vaccine sometimes caused swollen arms, fever, and bacterial infections. Vaccination could cost a weeks missed wages.
Authorities had learned their lesson by the 1920s, when the diphtheria vaccine came on the scene, as James Colgrove notes in his book State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America. Diphtheria was a much-feared killer of children, and publicity campaigns run by public health officials, insurance companies, and charities sought to educate and persuade rather than coerce.
Polio terrified Americans, peaking in 1952 with more than 57,000 cases. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself a polio patient, had begun a national scientific program to battle the disease, backed by millions of Americans contributions through the March of Dimes.
The result of this national quest, uniting government and the people, was Jonas Salks inactivated polio vaccine. It cemented a powerful post-World War II trust in the U.S. scientific and medical establishment that would endure for many years.
Social solidarity was also important.
Vaccines prevent the circulation of a disease among the unvaccinated via what scientists call herd immunityif enough people are vaccinated. When a reliable rubella vaccine became available in 1969, states quickly required childhood vaccination, even though rubella was practically harmless in children. They wanted to protect a vulnerable populationpregnant womento prevent a repeat of the 1963-64 congenital rubella epidemic, which resulted in 30,000 fetal deaths and the birth of more than 20,000 babies with severe disabilities.
The embrace of the rubella vaccine, as historian Elena Conis of the University of California-Berkeley notes in her book, Vaccine Nation: Americas Changing Relationship With Immunization, marked the first time a vaccine had been deployed that offered no direct benefit to those who were vaccinated.
Still, it took a combination of fear, solidarity, and coercion for Orenstein and his colleagues at the CDC and state public health agencies to drive childhood vaccination rates for measles, whooping cough, rubella, and diphtheria to 90 percent and above in the 1990s to assure herd immunity.
Shame was also a tool. Orenstein remembered testifying to the Florida legislature when it was considering a tougher vaccine mandate. He showed them that disease rates were lower in neighboring states that had tighter mandates. It worked.
Whats different now? In a politically divided nation, trust in science is low and experts are distrustedpoliticians more so. Childhood vaccination efforts are already beset by large numbers of hesitant parents. And efforts to fight the COVID epidemic in the United States have been clumsy and chaotic at best, leaving Americans to doubt the competence of their governments and institutions.
There is still fear. Maybe Im an old-fashioned fool, but I think that most people will welcome a vaccine, if the rollout is done right, said David Oshinsky, a professor of history at New York University and author of Polio: An American Story, a Pulitzer Prize-winning history. Most people are desperately afraid of COVID. A minority thumb their noses, many of them for political reasons. How will this change when theres a vaccine that [hopefully] changes the health risk equation to some degree?
Recent surveys show as few as half of Americans are determined to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Those numbers could change depending on a number of hard-to-predict factors, said Conis, of Berkeley.
A lot of people will be really eager to get it, she said. A lot will be hesitant, not only because of misinformation but because of a lack of trust in the current administration.
When a coronavirus vaccine is introduced, it may be sold as personal protection, even for young, healthy people. But those who suffer most from the virus are usually older or sicker. An effective vaccination campaign may try to instill a sense of solidarity, or altruism, as well as a more general sense that without vaccination, the economy cant get back on its feet.
Im not clear if people accept that solidarity, Orenstein said. People look more for whats good for themselves than whats good for society. That said, the risk of COVID-19 to young people is not zero. Thats one of the major ways to sell this, in a sense.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Novavax is racking up Covid-19 vaccine deals for global markets. And the stock shows. Washington Business Journal
North Texas couple among the first volunteers to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trial
Phase three trials for a COVID-19 vaccine are well underway with several North Texans choosing to participate to help create a viable vaccine. One couple is among the first volunteers for the trial.
DALLAS - Phase three trials for a COVID-19 vaccine are well underway with several North Texans choosing to participate to help create a viable vaccine. One couple is among the first volunteers for the trial.
When John and veronica Seidenstein saw volunteers were needed for the final trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine, both jumped at the opportunity to be among the first to get a vaccine.
Im high risk, and she's frontline. She works in a public school district, John said. And I'm type-two diabetic and high blood pressure, and neither of us have seen our older family members since this started.
Because of Johns health conditions, their family has been taking other precautions, like wearing masks and not going out for months.
You feel helpless with this thing going on. I don't care who you are, even if you don't believe in COVID, you still feel helpless, John said. Because the economy's got problems. Things are closed and this is like the only thing you can do that makes you not helpless.
The couple says after consulting with their doctors and family members, they felt safe participating in Phizers phase three trials.
After a medical screening and a blood draw, they got their first shots Aug. 1 and will go back on the 20th for a booster shot. Theyre also tracking any symptoms through an app on their phones. So far, they havent had any issues.
Track for a week how you're feeling. You have a little app on your phone that you track for a week, take your temperature. Very simple, very easy, Veronica said.
And we still don't know if we had it. We either get the placebo or you get the vaccines, John said. So still a 50/50 chance, whether we got one or the other but still a 50/50 chance.
They hope to help speed the process of finding a vaccine along.
COVID-19 vaccine trials are happening in Fort Worth, Keller and Houston. Participants are still needed.
Anyone who is interested in participatingin a vaccine trial can call (817) 348-0228 or visit ventaviaresearch.com.
Most of us are doing what we can to avoid catching and spreading the COVID-19 virus washing our hands, staying home, wearing face masks in public, spraying Lysol all over everything we come in contact with, washing our hands, washing our hands and washing our hands some more.
Heres hoping that a vaccine much like that yearly flu shot many of us acquiesce to is just around the corner. Progress is being made toward that end, and it would be nice to be able to stop hunkering down in our houses and get fully back out into the world.
But not everyone is willing to get that shot. According to a recent Gallup poll, 35 percent of Americans say they would not get a vaccine right now, even if it were free and FDA-approved. Of course, that leaves 65 percent who would jump at the chance.
Which camp are you in? Would you get a COVID-19 vaccination right now if you could?
UC needs volunteers to participate in the next phase of the COVID-19 vaccine trial WKRC TV Cincinnati
The typical process for developing a vaccine of rigorous rounds of trials and long evaluation periods is not going to work for COVID-19. Saving lives and livelihoods depends on significantly speeding up the process and evaluating the risk of that.
Dr. Penny Heaton, the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, has written about this compression of six years of work into six months. Dr. Heaton joined the Texas Standard to discuss COVID-19 vaccine development.
What factors have enabled the unprecedented speed of vaccine development?
We already understood how it causes disease and what we need to target with respect to a vaccine to try to prevent coronavirus disease. The second was just the new vaccine technologies that have emerged over the last several years allow production of thousands of doses for clinical trials very quickly. And then the third was really figuring out activities in parallel that are not done sequentially.
Are there additional risks to moving forward with this vaccine?
In the normal course of vaccine development, we are looking at things like what is the unmet medical need, how fast can we move forward and what are the benefits of moving forward versus the potential risk of this particular vaccine. The vaccine developers are thinking about that same ratio of benefit risk here.
Will it continue to evolve, even once the trial period is complete?
The vaccine developers will continue on with what we call life-cycle management. So even when vaccines are approved, the safety will continue to be monitored post-approval. So these questions that you can only answer with time, and only answer as thousands and millions of people get the vaccine, they will still be answered.
How long before a vaccine will be readily available to the public?
I am not directly involved with development of any of these vaccines, so any estimates that I give you would only be speculation. But I am optimistic from what Im hearing from colleagues and scientists, etc. that, in the next six-to-twelve months, that the first vaccine doses could be available.
Web story by Sarah Gabrielli
If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support ithere. Your gift helps pay for everything you find ontexasstandard.organdKUT.org. Thanks for donating today.
"I'm not anti-vaccine. My kids were both vaccinated with everything, but I would not take a Covid vaccine today," Bailey told CNN.
"I have underlying health issues ... I would want to see enough studies in a long-term period of what the ramifications are for the vaccine."
Bailey said she doesn't trust US President Donald Trump, and that consensus around a vaccine among the world's top scientists and at least six months of testing would be just "a start" in persuading her to take it. "It's much too soon for me, I'd have to say, 18 months."
Neil Johnson, a physicist at George Washington University who is studying vaccine skepticism on social media, told CNN the four most common objections are: safety; whether a vaccine is needed; trust of the establishment and pharmaceutical companies; and perceived uncertainty in the science.
To see how widespread hesitancy is, he suggests asking your family and friends whether they would take a Covid-19 vaccine if one were available now.
"I would be surprised if you ask 10 people and you get all 10 jumping and saying yes without adding any caveats," he said.
Doubts over Covid-19 vaccine
Johnson said this was a "massive issue" -- and possibly an even bigger one than the polls indicate.
"What the question probably should have said is, will you have the Covid vaccine, will you be first to have it? And of course, I think that the answer for that will be no, I'll wait 'til everyone else has had it.
"There's always doubt among the anti-vax[xers], but there's now a sufficient doubt among this undecided population.
"I'm very, very concerned, I don't think public health has had this challenge [before] ... because there haven't been social media and these kinds of online influences."
Global spread of vaccine hesitancy
Johnson told CNN that in Africa, misinformation is spreading about the program being used as a cover to sterilize swathes of the population. "The fear about that is actually huge in developing countries now," he said.
Countering the objections
"There's clearly cause for concern; the emphasis on speed, on rushing a new vaccine," Jeremy Ward, who published a study on vaccine hesitancy with French research consortium Coconel in The Lancet in May, told CNN.
"I think the main factor is trust in institutions," said Ward. He said coronavirus debates in France had become highly politicized. Coconel's study found that those who had voted for a far-left or far-right candidate, or didn't vote at all, were much more likely to say that they would refuse a vaccine.
His research suggests that Russia could have more vaccine refusers than any other country.
Ratzan said the issue isn't just the inaccurate information, it's the growing lack of trust in institutions. "I think we're starting to see these two factors really wear down the public psyche and vaccine acceptance along with it, which is a huge concern," he said.
An earlier CUNY School of Public Health Covid-19 study found that just 42% of likely vaccine refusers in New York would be swayed by approval from the FDA or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Several surveys and reports found hesitancy among Black and ethnic minority communities, which are disproportionately affected by the virus.
Time to prepare
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said in a Thursday briefing: "People need to be allowed to have a conversation about vaccines, and have a proper conversation. It's not a one-way street. It's not about shoving things down people's throats. It's about having a proper discussion, good information, good discussion on this -- and people will make up their own minds."
"I think science and government have a job to do that is to make the case. I think communities and people have a job to do, which is to listen to that case, and hopefully the result of that will be a widely accepted successful vaccine that could bring this pandemic to an end," Ryan said.
Experts say we need a strategy for when a vaccine is produced, covering who will receive one first, how and where it will be distributed, possible different options, and how concerns will be addressed.
Ward emphasized that this is not just about convincing people a vaccine is safe but about doing everything possible to ensure it really is. "When you produce a new vaccine with such speed, it's not just communication, it's also transparency and making the right decisions," he said.
Community groups including the National Black Church Initiative have been working to ensure sufficient numbers of African Americans participate in vaccine trials. Ratzan said involvement from respected community members was vital to ensure people feel "they're being listened to, their concerns are met, and that the vaccine they are getting is held to the highest standards of safety and efficacy."
The timeline is vital. Ratzan added that with a new medicine, 18 months could be spent working with companies, medical groups and doctors and thinking about branding, social media or text campaigns. "We don't have any of that now," he said.
Air conditioners on a building. Scientists say there has been too little research into the role of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in the spread of the coronavirus. Sami Sarkis/Getty Images hide caption
Air conditioners on a building. Scientists say there has been too little research into the role of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in the spread of the coronavirus.
In the dog days of August, air conditioning is everywhere.
Is that a problem when it comes to the spread of the coronavirus?
The answer to that question rests on the way the virus is transmitted a topic that is still being researched.
Droplet transmission is considered the most common method: A virus-filled particle of breath or spittle comes out of the nose or mouth of an infected individual when they breathe, speak, cough or sneeze. These droplets generally disperse within a few feet of the person who expels them. But if they come into contact with someone's eyes, nose or mouth, they can transmit the virus.
Then there's aerosol transmission when an infected person expels microscopic infectious particles so tiny that they linger in the air and spread from person to person in air currents. Since they are much smaller than droplets, aerosols can travel greater distances and get deep into the lungs of someone who inhales them.
Among scientists, there is ongoing debate about the extent to which aerosol transmission causes infection. However, it has been generally accepted that it does occur, especially in closed indoor settings. Consequently, there's a possibility that air conditioning may be a potential route of transmission sucking in virus particles breathed out by an infected person and then blowing those infectious particles back out in the same room or even another room several floors away.
In fact, other infectious diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, chickenpox, influenza, smallpox and SARS have all been shown to spread through heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
But drawing definitive conclusions about the role that HVAC systems might play in spreading COVID-19 is difficult. There are only a few published studies looking at that issue, and experts admit there has been too little research into the role of HVAC systems in the spread of the novel coronavirus.
"We didn't focus on ventilation as much early on as we probably should have," says Abraar Karan, a physician and global health researcher at Harvard Medical School.
What we do know is this: HVAC systems primarily recirculate air in a room or a building and don't bring in any fresh air from outside. So yes, theoretically virus-containing aerosols could be sucked into an air conditioning system and then circulated around a building.
In one study, which is available online as a pre-print and has not undergone scientific review, researchers in Oregon collected samples from various places inside a hospital's HVAC system and found genetic material from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This demonstrates that it may be possible for the virus to be transmitted through HVAC systems.
However, researchers did not assess if the genetic material they found was able to cause infection, and they noted there were no confirmed COVID-19 cases associated with the samples found in the ventilation systems.
There is currently no other evidence documenting the possibility of COVID-19 transmission through an air conditioning unit.
The bigger risk, says Edward Nardell, a professor of environmental health and immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard Medical School, is that hot weather outside causes people to seek air-conditioned comfort indoors. And indoors, there is less ventilation and more opportunity to spread disease.
"It is not the air conditioner that is doing anything particularly," Nardell says. "It is the fact that you are indoors, you are not socially distancing and you are rebreathing the air that people have just exhaled."
When you shut the doors and windows to keep the hot air outside, you are essentially eliminating the flow of fresh air so everyone in the room is breathing and rebreathing the same air. If someone in the room is infected with COVID-19, then they are breathing out the virus, which can linger in airborne droplets and be inhaled by another person, potentially causing infection.
By comparison, if you were outside and near an infected person who breathed out some viral particles, there is a much larger volume of air flowing to disperse and dilute those particles quickly, reducing the risk of spread to another person nearby. That is why infectious disease experts consider outdoor gatherings and activities less risky than indoor ones (though not completely risk-free).
The other major risk is that air conditioning units, fans or even an open window can create strong enough air currents to move virus-containing droplets around a room. This happened in January at a restaurant in Guangzhou, China, where a person with COVID-19 infected five other people sitting at neighboring tables from 3 to 6 feet away, according to a study by scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. After examining video footage of the diners who were infected and simulating the transmission of the virus, scientists concluded that the small outbreak was caused by strong air currents from the air conditioning unit above the diners, which was blowing virus-containing aerosols from an infected person to those nearby. The restaurant also had no windows and thus no ventilation bringing in fresh air and diluting virus particles in the air.
The fact that aerosolized viral droplets can move in air currents in this way means that if you are in a room with an infected person and fresh air is not circulating, even if you are socially distancing to keep 6 feet apart at a minimum, you may not be safe, Nardell says. Although there are currently no published studies that have examined exactly how far airborne COVID-19 particles can travel, previous research on influenza found that viral particles may travel upward of 30 feet in the air.
To be clear, this is only a concern in shared public places. At home, the risk of contracting COVID-19 through air currents or air conditioning units is no more likely than spreading the virus through close contact or touching contaminated surfaces.
And it's not just warm weather and air conditioning that poses a threat. Cold weather in the winter that similarly forces people to go inside and crank the heat also creates an environment with little ventilation where viral particles can be spread through the air and cause infection. Ride-sharing services and taxis are another place where you may be in a closed space with someone who is infected. Virus particles could spread through air currents in the car, Karan points out.
Whether you're taking a taxi or escaping the heat or cold indoors, Karan's advice is the same.
"I would say keep the windows open and talk to your employers about [whether] they're looking into air filtration systems that are able to filter a wide range of particles," he says. He also adds that we need to design a better protective mask, one that can filter out the virus and is comfortable enough to wear all day.
To Karan, the looming question is: How do we live safely indoors with COVID-19? That is the next frontier.
The West Virginia Department of Health andHuman Resources (DHHR) reportsas of 10:00 a.m., on August 15, 2020, there have been 350,076 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 8,457 total cases and 160 deaths.
DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 67-yearold female from Pleasants County, an 88-year old female from Mercer County anda 95-year old female from Logan County. I urge everyone in West Virginia to dotheir part to reduce the spread of this virus throughout our communities so we canprotect one another and prevent further loss of life, said Bill J. Crouch,DHHR Cabinet Secretary.
CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour(31), Berkeley (733), Boone (117), Braxton (8), Brooke (74), Cabell (447),Calhoun (6), Clay (18), Doddridge (6), Fayette (166), Gilmer (18), Grant (131),Greenbrier (95), Hampshire (86), Hancock (112), Hardy (63), Harrison (243),Jackson (166), Jefferson (304), Kanawha (1,066), Lewis (28), Lincoln (105),Logan (354), Marion (199), Marshall (130), Mason (70), McDowell (66), Mercer(227), Mineral (126), Mingo (200), Monongalia (986), Monroe (20), Morgan (32),Nicholas (39), Ohio (278), Pendleton (42), Pleasants (14), Pocahontas (42),Preston (128), Putnam (216), Raleigh (292), Randolph (213), Ritchie (3), Roane(19), Summers (18), Taylor (61), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (38), Wayne(218), Webster (4), Wetzel (45), Wirt (7), Wood (275), Wyoming (46).
As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county,or even the state as an individual in question may have crossed the stateborder to be tested. Such is the case of Mineral andNicholas counties in this report.
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR.
On August 12, 2020, DHHR announced thatboth confirmed and probable deaths will be reported on the dashboard, per CDCguidelines. Probable deaths are defined as decedents who had no knownpositive laboratory test for COVID-19 but whose death certificate listsCOVID-19 as a cause of death or contributing factor, or decedents who weresymptomatic and had a known exposure to COVID-19.
Data ispublished daily at 10 a.m. on the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov.
