Mini-Throughput: A Year of COVID

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Another week, another day of more good news on the vaccine front:

In an analysis released Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration said the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine has met the requirements for emergency use authorization — another step toward the authorization of a third shot for the United States.

The efficacy of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against moderate to severe/critical Covid-19 across all geographic areas was 66.9% at least 14 days after the single-dose vaccination and 66.1% at least 28 days after vaccination, according to the analysis, which is meant to brief the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

There’s also an 85% reduction in the most serious cases and new data showing that it works against the new COVID variants. 66% only sounds low because we are using the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines as our benchmark. This efficacy is better than the seasonal flu vaccine and good enough that it can deny the virus the pathways it needs to spread. Johnson and Johnson have hinted that they could have 100 million doses by June. Combined with the other vaccines and those that have already had the disease, that means we could be approaching herd immunity by summer.

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine, like the AztraZeneca vaccine and the Sputnik vaccine, is a viral vector vaccine. The injection has a cold virus that latches onto your cells. Only instead of injecting a blueprint to make more cold virus, it injects a blueprint to make the COVID-19 spike protein. After that, it’s just like the mRNA vaccines. Your body starts making the spike protein. Your immune system recognizes the threat, figures out how to kill it and stores the battle plans in case it needs them again. XKCD explains the process with Star Wars analogies.

But, oh it gets better. The first results of Israel’s vaccination plan have shown it is just as effective in the wild as it is in the lab, with stunning reductions in serious cases and mortality. And there is some very preliminary data indicating that it may actually stop infection — that is, that you can’t transmit the disease as effectively when you’re vaccinated. If confirmed, that would not only a big deal for getting this pandemic under control; it would mean that vaccinated people are safe to interact with unvaccinated people. It would mean we can start easing up COVID restrictions.

It has been almost exactly one year since I first wrote about the Coronavirus. I think most of that piece holds up. I badly overestimated how well our government would respond to the threat and how much it would disrupt our society. But overall, this has been serious but not the end of the world. And I especially stand by this.

We are fortunate right now to live in an era of relative peace and reasonable international cooperation. And we are very fortunate to also live in a golden age of science. Some of the finest minds in human history are using the most sophisticated technology in human history to figure out ways to treat or vaccinate against this virus.

It has been one hell of a 366 days. We have seen millions of our fellow Americans get sick and hundreds of thousands die. We have fought over mask mandates, shutdowns and lockdowns. We have seen medical miracles and medical failures. I have written more words about this pandemic than I probably have about anything in my life outside of professional pursuits. And I’m sure you guys are getting sick of hearing about it. But throughout the last year, I have repeated the mantra “know hope”. And that paragraph above is why. Because I knew that brilliant people were working on this. And if there was a way to be found, they would.

As you read these words, I may be getting my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The first dose gave me a small amount of muscle soreness and a mild cough; my wife had the same symptoms only a bit worse. I still don’t think it’s appropriate for young people given both the novelty of the technology and the extreme mildness of the disease among children. But the more people we vaccinate, the more the virus will find itself walled off, its reach shrinking, its terror fading. We may never reach “COVID zero”. But we can knock this thing back to where we just have small outbreaks that are quickly controlled.

Congratulations to the people at Johnson and Johnson. They’ve just added another weapon to our growing arsenal.