Vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine, and Walls
As have many days during this pandemic, strange things abound. A few days ago, Donald Trump announced that Moncef Slaoui would head Operation Warp Speed, the federal project to rapidly develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Slaoui, who has been the chairman of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline’s global vaccines division and on the board of Moderna, a small biotech whose vaccine candidate was already in a Phase I trial in Washington state, made a cryptic statement regarding hopeful news on this front. Today the results of a preliminary report from that trial revealed some hopeful news; there was no overt safety problem in trial participants and the vaccine appeared to generate antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in the participants.
On that news, Wall Street did one of its usual gyrations upward. The Dow rose today more than 900 points and the other major indices were also significantly boosted. We all like and really want good news in the midst of this pandemic but a dose of reality is in order. A Phase I vaccine trial is done for safety in healthy adults. In the small population in this trial there was nothing to suggest a safety signal. Antibodies were detected which is also a hopeful sign. Having worked with the same group that is capturing and analyzing the data in Maryland, however, all of this must be understood as very preliminary. Further trials in larger numbers of people with wider age variation and various health issues are necessary to understand the safety side of the equation better. Even then, one needs to remember that rare safety issues may be missed in Phase I trials. Likewise, the production of antibodies must be assessed in a bigger and more diverse population to understand what immunity is really generated and how long such immunity lasts. I personally think the name Operation Warp Speed is a misnomer; this will not be like being on the starship Enterprise with Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock.
And today, Trump announced he is taking daily hydroxychloroquine as a preventive for COVID-19. Trump is 73, obese, addicted to Diet Coke and cheeseburgers. Despite what has been released about his health, I seriously doubt he would do well if he became infected with SARS-CoV-2. My guess is that he is scared senseless about people close to him testing positive and what that means for him. Of course, he lurches toward what his “gut” tells him and begins taking a medicine that is probably useless against COVID-19 but has a side effect profile that ought to worry him even more than the coronavirus. Watch Trump’s health, physical and mental, because hydroxychloroquine has potential to compromise both.
During my exercise today, I listened to a great podcast I would like to share with you. It has nothing to do with coronavirus but much to do with another problem we face in our world -- walls. The speaker is Alexandra Auer and she discusses the intangible effects of walls. The central point was most interesting to me. Building physical walls also creates walls in our mind. Walls act to separate people physically; the mental walls they create serve to separate us into the classic “Us versus Them.” Dr. Auer is German and she uses research from the reunification of Germany after the fall of the wall as well as a study she did at two schools in Brussels separated by a wall. The mental walls can last a lifetime. That wall on the southern border? Its nasty effects will be with us well past the lifetimes of those of us alive. Much better to build bridges than walls. Here is the link: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-fmxbn-8e5c517?utm_campaign=a_share_ep&utm_medium=dlink&utm_source=a_share .
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