Protecting yourself from possible second wave of COVID-19
Top health officials are warning of a possible second wave of COVID-19 in the winter time.
LAKE MARY, Fla. - Top health officials are warning of a possible second wave of COVID-19 in the winter time.
In an interview with the Washington Post, CDC director Robert Redfield said the second wave could be more devastating as it would clash with flu season.
Orlando doctor Jason Littleton said the two together could possibly set the stage for a devastating situation.
While we do have a vaccine for the flu and we do have medication for the flu, again, we dont have anything for the coronavirus, he said.
He said research gathered now will be critical in determining how prepared well be for an influx.
I think retrospectively were going to get a lot of data out of this time and thats gonna go forward to help us in 2021, 2022 so on and so forth and were gonna learn from this experience, he said.
He hopes by then well have more evidence on which medications work and which dont for COVID-19.
While he doesnt think a vaccine would be ready by then, he said communities should focus on protecting the high-risk population and continue prevention efforts such as increasing PPE equipment and continuing social distancing.
So how can you protect yourself?
Dr. Littleton said staying on top of your health is key.
Make sure that were taking care of underlying conditions. Being consistent with seeing our doctors. Being consistent with complying with the medications, he explained.
He also urges you to get a flu shot.
If youre working on one illness and another illness sneaks up like COVID-19 that could be devastating for someone, so getting a flu shot is definitely a must, he said.
PORTLAND, Ore. An employee who worked at the Whole Foods Market in Portland's Pearl District has died from COVID-19, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed Wednesday.
It's unknown what role the individual had at the store. The person died April 20.
Additionally, an employee at the Hollywood location of Whole Foods in Northeast Portland has tested positive for coronavirus. The company spokeswoman didn't release details about what that individual's role was at the store, to protect the person's privacy.
The safety of our team members and customers is our top priority and we are diligently following all guidance from local healthand food safetyauthorities. As we prioritize the health and safety of our customers and Team Members, we will continue to do the following to help contain the spread of COVID-19," read a statement from Whole Foods Market.
Here's a look at the measures Whole Foods Market has implemented at its stores in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
Fred Meyer announced last month that an employee working at its Northeast Glisan store in Portland tested positive for COVID-19 and hadn't been to work since March 10.
Earlier this month, WinCo announced that three of its workers in two Oregon stores had tested positive for the coronavirus.
RELATED: 3 Oregon WinCo workers test positive for coronavirus
RELATED: Fred Meyer employee at Northeast Portland store tested positive for coronavirus
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China is the only country that has performed well in dealing with this crisis, declared Saudi-owned broadcaster Al-Arabiya in a March review of Chinas COVID-19 efforts. While nominally independent, the station reportedly taken over by the Saudi the royal court in 2014 tends to reflect official Saudi views. These views can change, however. In an April segment that covered mounting criticisms of Beijing, presenter Rufaydah Yassin commented that it appears that Chinas efforts to market its successes with regard to the coronavirus have not yet panned out.
In the initial weeks and months of the pandemic, a wide range of Saudi outlets offered favorable reviews of Chinas response, while finding little to praise about U.S. efforts. These discussions in Saudi Arabia, a close security partner of the United States with considerable press censorship, provide evidence of the damage done to U.S. standing abroad by its America First, America Only approach to the crisis, and of the abysmal performance of its government at home.
However, Chinas mixed record in boosting its image in Riyadh is a reminder that soft-power competition is not a zero-sum game. Even as Saudi outlets have grown more willing to air criticisms of China, some have derided the efforts of President Donald Trump and his administration to blame COVID-19 on Beijing.
Blaming China is a convenient electoral strategy but an ineffective foreign policy, with considerable downsides. If Washington wants to maintain its international standing amid COVID-19 including in places like Saudi Arabia it needs to focus first on containing and responding to the virus at home, rather than lodging accusations abroad. The United States should do what it can to facilitate a capable domestic response to the pandemic, while affording its diplomats the funding and political cover needed to offer small but symbolic forms of public health assistance overseas.
Initial Praise for Chinas Apparent Success
Within Saudi Arabia, media commentary initially highlighted Chinas successes in containing the virus. They cited Wuhans strict social controls while avoiding discussion of the lies and lack of transparency from the Chinese government that allowed the virus to spread in the first place. Although media commentary cannot be taken as a direct expression of views by Saudi officials, these statements and articles do reflect the bounds of acceptable public discourse, and as such, an indirect reflection of official sympathies with the Chinese model of durable upgraded authoritarianism.
Top columnists in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a widely-read paper owned by King Salman and his immediate family, offered support for Chinas strict social controls in containing the pandemic. On March 16, Salman al-Dosary, former editor-in-chief of the paper, praised Chinas success in employing strict quarantines to lay siege to the disease. Al-Dosary, along with many Saudi writers, further sought to identify the Saudi governments response to Chinas as an example of decisive action to contain the virus.
Others made it clear that strict controls needed to be backed by a threat of force to keep citizens in line. The U.S. government does not have enough military force to keep ten million people [in New York] at home, unlike China, noted Abdel-Rahman al-Rashed, another longtime media figure who is said to be close to the Saudi Royal Court, on April 9. If China had not done so [in Wuhan], the number of those affected would be in the tens of million. He also encouraged readers earlier in March to focus on resolving the crisis rather than assigning blame. Maybe it started in a country before China, but its origin does not concern us as much as overcoming it and returning to normal life.
Evolving Saudi Coverage of China
While favorable views of Chinas example of authoritarian rule amid state-led development are hardly new in Saudi Arabias media and commentary, these perspectives have historically been balanced by criticisms of Chinas godless communist ideology and its hostility towards the practice of Islam within its borders. Yet as the two countries economic relationship has strengthened, even as the Saudi monarchy de-emphasizes Islamic credentials in its claims to authority, critical views have largely disappeared from the Saudi press.
Mohammed Al-Sudairi, Saudi expert on Sino-Middle Eastern relations, noted in 2013 an avid admiration by many Saudi commentators for Chinas economic miracle. Writing on the occasion of the 2010 Shanghai expo, Saudi columnist Mohammed al-Makhlouf highlighted Chinas enormous strides in economic development. This article was carried by Al-Watan, a more populist broadsheet that has occasionally championed issues of social or political reform in the kingdom.
In years past, however, this admiration was tempered by concerns about Chinas treatment of Muslim minorities an area of particular concern for citizens of a kingdom that claims leadership of the Muslim world. Despite official silence over a 2009 crackdown on protests and riots by Chinas Uighur Muslim minority, Saudi newspapers helped spur popular outrage over treatment of Muslims within China.
Others focused on Chinese repression more broadly. Chinese citizens cannot object to [state repression] in a country that executes five thousand of its citizens every year, some of them for minor crimes such as tax evasion, noted Muhammad Alwan in 2011, also for Al-Watan. This pushback contributed to Saudi views of China that were unusually unfavorable for the Arab world.
However, with the recent rise to power of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, criticism of China (among many other topics) has been muted. This reflects a shrinking sphere for political commentary as well as repression of all forms of political Islam within the country.
The Chinese government has thus found a more receptive audience for its efforts to normalize the repression of Muslim minorities as it emphasizes a shared interest of Chinese and Arab autocrats in the subjugation of potentially threatening populations. Indeed, Muhammad bin Salman emphasized Chinas right to carry out anti-terrorism and de-extremisation work in reference to the countrys crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.
Still, there has been some leeway for Saudis to criticize Chinas handling of the pandemic, particularly on social media, but only when it avoids religious interpretations of Chinas culpability. Several Saudi individuals have reportedly been arrested for the kind of divine-punishment explanations that led some in the Arab world to argue that Chinas affliction with the virus results from its governments mistreatment of Muslim minorities.
Saudi businessman Hussein Shobokshi faced no repercussions, however, for predicting that China would face difficult times in being held accountable for the pandemic. Another Twitter influencer, who initially hyped conspiracies of biological warfare being responsible for the virus, charged China with being a threat to the health of the world in a racialized attack.
Authoritarian Admiration
The bulk of Saudi commentary in March, however, was not shy about identifying the authoritarianism of the Chinese regime and, by extension, the harsh measures taken by Saudi Arabias absolute monarchy as a decisive factor in effective COVID-19 responses. Saudi columnists for a more nationalist daily, Okaz a platform known for frequent conspiratorial accusations along with occasional (and extremely subtle) critiques of state policy lauded the Chinese response for, among other factors, being free of political quarrels and partisan controversy. Others noted that Beijings evidently successful management of the crisis lent credibility to Chinas efforts at garnering soft power in the region.
These comparisons (largely sidestepping successful responses in democracies like Germany, Japan, or South Korea) feed into a regular line of Saudi commentary criticism of Western notions of human rights and political freedoms. Salman al-Dosary argued that Western democracies ineffective responses to COVID-19 was a function of their inability to limit citizens freedoms, stating, The world has discovered that the same principles that protect public freedoms are the same ones that stand unable to protect lives. European nations have come under particular criticism, with Okaz writer Hamood Abu Taleb accusing the states of the old continent of suffering from a different terminal illness resting on their laurels rather than striving to address new social challenges.
Some of Okazs columnists have even adopted the fringe conspiracies popular on Chinese social media, such as the idea that Italy rather than China is the true source of the COVID-19 outbreak. What if it is proven beyond any doubt that COVID-19 is not from China, but that China simply discovered it and helped the world to confront it? Will anyone doubt that China will then be the leader of a new world? opined Hani al-Dhaheri, one of the papers most pugnacious writers.
These media narratives have no doubt been helped along by an effective Chinese public-relations campaign, including collaborations between the China Media Group and outlets across the Arabic-speaking world. Chinas ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chen Weiqing, has been active on Twitter, promoting Saudi-Chinese solidarity and highlighting instances of Saudi-Chinese medical collaboration to understand and contain the virus. The ambassador has also drawn attention to his Arabic-language appearances on Saudi television shows to explain the Chinese governments COVID-19 response.
In print media, the consul general of China in Jeddah, Tan Banglin, listed off Chinas efforts to contain the virus in an Okaz op-ed, while criticizing those who have wasted time smearing the reputation of China. Ambassador Chen gave an interview to the more established Al-Riyadh, emphasizing the importance of trade ties with the kingdom and highlighting Chinas efforts to assist in combatting the virus around the world.
This messaging comes against a backdrop of limited but meaningful cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia with regards to COVID-19, as was seen with Saudi Arabia sending a shipment of aid to Wuhan, China (the epicenter of the outbreak) in early March. At the same time, the Chinese ambassador to Saudi Arabia was meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council to share some of the Chinese governments accumulated knowledge about the virus. Saudi Arabia also took part in a video conference between Chinese health officials and their counterparts across the Middle East and North Africa.
Whither the United States?
By contrast, U.S.-Saudi cooperation in response to the pandemic appears to have been almost nonexistent. Washingtons primary concern in the bilateral relationship appears to be the falling price of oil. Trumps priority with respect to the kingdom has been to pressure Saudi leaders to rescue U.S. shale producers from low oil prices, either through unilateral cuts or in cooperation with other producers. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has only mentioned the pandemic in passing before pressing Saudi counterparts on the importance of stabilizing global energy markets. The United States has even undermined Saudi efforts to coordinate greater support for the World Health Organization via the G-20 (which the kingdom currently heads), with Trump suspending payments to the World Health Organization outright.
Washington has largely been spared Saudi criticism, official or otherwise, because of an effective cordon sanitaire in Saudi media around the Trump administration. Saudi authorities are likely aware that they will never deal with a more favorable U.S. leader than Trump, who has consistently blocked or blunted U.S. domestic criticisms of Riyadh. In particular, Trump has wielded presidential vetoes to defend arms sales to the Saudi Arabia against bipartisan legislation, going against Congress and an American public deeply skeptical of arms sales abroad. Saudi officials lobbying for Washington are also unlikely to find a more cooperative counterpart than the presidents advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
While few have gone as far as Muhammad al-Said in predicting that Trump will emerge from the crisis as the Abraham Lincoln of the age, most Saudi commentators have shied away from suggesting that his administration might be to blame for the course of the pandemic in the United States. Abdelrahman al-Rashed excused the slow U.S. response on the basis of the limited power of the federal state, while sympathizing with right-wing conspiracy theories in the United States that much of the suffering caused by the virus is a hoax aimed at attacking Trump.
Even in a sympathetic media environment, American efforts at public outreach reflect a persistent underinvestment in its diplomatic capacity compared with Chinese policies. Messaging out of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh has centered around rote repetition of centrally produced content, such as tweeting out an article highlighting the efforts of American distilleries to combat COVID-19 to followers in the nominally dry kingdom. Filling positions that require advanced Arabic-language skills is a constant struggle, making engagement with local media outlets an uphill battle; the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh has thus far only conducted one short interview (even shorter on specifics) with Okaz. This contrasts with a heavy emphasis on regional and language expertise in the Chinese diplomatic corps.
Narratives Without Works Are Useless
Some analysts, like the Hudson Institutes John Lee, have stressed that this war of narratives is where the United States needs to focus in attention to maintain its standing on the international stage. Yet this underestimates how much U.S. credibility on this issue has been undercut by its failure to mount an effective response at home and abroad. Other experts, like Jonathan Fulton of Zayed University, have argued that Chinas effective messaging and outreach have raised its standing among the Gulf monarchies. This is true to an extent, but it overestimates the credibility of Chinese messaging amid new revelations of its COVID-19 obfuscations.
Commentary in Saudi Arabia exposes the folly of official American messaging on COVID-19, which focuses on pinning the blame for the pandemic on China. American criticism of Beijing rings hollow given the obvious failure of the U.S. government to marshal an effective pandemic response within its own borders. For one, Chinas initial messaging was rendered credible by its past track-record of state-led development. Perhaps the successes declared by China are exaggerated or government propaganda, Abdelrahman al-Rashed conceded on March 30, but the numbers of its achievements in a decade and a half do not lie. At the same time, Chinas own failings have attracted increasing attention in all but Saudi Arabias most avowedly pro-China outlets. Articles in Okaz have increasingly highlighted Chinas manipulation of COVID-19 statistics; Abeer al-Fawzan accused China of attacking the whole world and Tariq al-Hamid referenced doubts about [Chinas] credibility in respective op-eds.
Furthermore, even as China falters in its efforts to make soft-power inroads with like-minded autocracies like the Gulf monarchies, the United States will not automatically benefit. Saudi commentators are certainly aware of the Trump administrations efforts to brand COVID-19 as the China virus, but strategic communications in the absence of concrete action damages American credibility. On social media, the amplified news of the medical achievements and successes from China is matched by a deliberate smear campaign from the United States, observed Abdelrahman al-Rashed in Al-Sharq al-Aawsat.
Al-Riyadh, probably the most pro-China of Saudi outlets, made no mention of China in a recent editorial on decisive responses to the pandemic. Yet it all but mocked Trump and Pompeo for contenting themselves [in their COVID-19 response] with calling the epidemic the Chinese virus rather than giving the crisis the attention it deserved. Likewise, Al-Sharq al-Aawsat afforded Hussein Shobokshi space to further criticize Chinas response, which he compared with the successful democratic model of the Republic of China (no mention of the United States).
Regardless of Chinas actions, U.S. domestic failures and an underwhelming diplomatic response the pandemic only reinforce the idea that the United States is both unwilling to provide a semblance of global leadership and unable to set much of an example for other countries to follow. The West has not shown a itself as a shining example of conduct towards the virus, noted former Saudi intelligence director Turki al-Faisal in an interview published April 5. Nor have China, Russia, and Iran.
A New Approach?
Instead of engaging in a war of words with China, the United States should improve its domestic response to the pandemic and find new ways to deepen international cooperation. At a minimum, regaining the standing to offer credible advice or criticism about the COVID-19 pandemic requires a more effective U.S. response domestically. Foreign audiences are likely to see efforts to cast blame on China as a way to deflect attention from the denial and dysfunction that has plagued the Trump administrations response to COVID-19.
For now, though, policymakers concerned with shoring up U.S. foreign relations with key states like Saudi Arabia should start with small efforts towards cooperation at the margins convening information sessions with U.S. health experts, for example, or finding new ways to support global academic and cultural exchange. Chinas support for Saudi Arabia amid the COVID-19 virus has been quite limited, yet it compares favorably with the practically nonexistent U.S. engagement. Unfortunately, the Trump administrations recent decision to defund the World Health Organization suggests that the diplomatic dimension of Washingtons pandemic response may get worse before it gets better.
Andrew Leber is a PhD candidate at Harvard Universitys Department of Government, where he researches Saudi policymaking in labor-market reform and regional development. He is on Twitter at @AndrewMLeber and occasionally blogs about Saudi media at The Bitter Lake.
Image: Saudi Press Agency
(CNN) Torbjrn "Thor" Pedersen is on a mission to visit every country in the world in a single journey, without taking a single flight.
After roughly six and a half years on the road and a budget of US$20 a day, Pedersen is just nine countries away from reaching this goal.
There's only one problem: He's stuck in Hong Kong.
While the 41-year-old was waiting in the city to board a ship to his next stop, the Paclfic archipelago of Palau, the outbreak of COVID-19 and ensuing travel restrictions derailed his plans.
But the Danish native and goodwill ambassador for the Danish Red Cross is determined to make the most of the situation.
The 41-year-old, who sports road-worn Black Salomon X Ultra trekking trainers and a chest-length beard, is clearly itching to keep moving.
"Every day I spend in Hong Kong is another day that I'm not making progress. I'm losing time but trying to make the best of it," Pedersen tells CNN Travel.
"With what's going on in the world, it will take at least another year to finish. Quitting is a consideration -- I'm dead tired [of traveling] and ready to go home. But I'm also stubborn and driven."
Born in Denmark, Pedersen had an international upbringing where he always had "one leg in Denmark and one leg somewhere else."
During his childhood, his family flitted between Toronto, Vancouver and New Jersey for his father's job in the textile industry and visited his mother's side of the family in Finland during summer and winter holidays.
"My mother is a travel guide, so she speaks several languages and has always been interested in the world," he adds.
"When it comes to a sense for business and structure, getting up early and getting things done, I got that from my father. I got walking around in the forest looking for mushrooms and trolls, thinking outside of the box and being adventurous from my mother."
With flights off the table, Pedersen has relied heavily on container ships.
Torbjrn (Thor) Pedersen/Once Upon A Saga
As an adult, Pedersen served in the Danish Army as a Royal Life Guard (akin to the fur-capped Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace in London) then worked in the shipping and logistics industry for 12 years, where assignments took him from Libya to Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Greenland and Florida.
The idea to attempt this particular challenge -- to visit every country on a nonstop journey without taking a single flight -- came to him serendipitously, through an article his father sent him.
"I discovered that it's actually possible to go to every country in the world -- I had never thought about it before," says Pedersen.
Six years away from home
After 10 months of careful planning, Pedersen departed on October 10, 2013.
First, he'd travel around Europe, then North America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Mediterranean, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and over to the far-flung islands in the Pacific.
"Since I worked in shipping and logistics, I was used to having multiple things in the air at the same time, finding solutions and making everything more efficient," he says. "That helped a lot in a project like this -- it could easily take 20 years if you're not careful."
There are 195 sovereign nations in the world, according to the United Nations, but Pedersen isn't stopping there. By the end of his journey, he will have visited 203 countries in total.
Pedersen imposed exceptionally strict rules on himself: He must spend at least 24 hours in every country and can't return home until he's done.
In addition, Pedersen planned to visit the Red Cross (also known as Red Crescent or Red Crystal, depending on the locale) wherever the movement operates to spread awareness about their local initiatives.
So far, he's already visited Red Cross societies in 189 countries -- a feat that Pedersen says has never been done before.
Securing visas for hard-to-visit destinations such as Syria and Angola was often a challenge, says Pedersen.
Torbjrn (Thor) Pedersen/Once Upon A Saga
And of course, the cardinal rule: no flights. With the ease of airports off the table, he'd need to traverse the globe via trains, taxis, buses, ride-shares, tuk-tuks, ferries and container ships.
Pedersen has relied heavily on cargo ships to travel long distances, working closely with companies such as Maersk, Blue Water Shipping, Swire, MSC, Pacific international Lines, Neptune and Columbia.
"You can't just show up and get on a container ship," says Pedersen. "You need to get approvals from the company ahead of time, which takes a lot of time and patience."
In some cases, Pedersen relied on his professional connections. In others, his association with the Red Cross helped, while the monumental nature of this challenge helped to cement partnerships.
"Coordinating everything takes a lot of time. And even if you do have all your connections planned and everything lined up, you can't plan for natural disasters or typhoons," which he says threw his schedule off course on numerous occasions.
Even so, he's kept all of his promises to himself and his thousands of online followers who have become invested in his journey.
"There's nothing stopping this journey from ending, except for me ... But I have to ask myself: Do I want to be the person who quit? Or do I want to be able to say that I never quit, not even once. Not when I had malaria. Not when I was losing my girlfriend. Not when my grandmother died. Not when I lost financial backing. Not when I was in pain," he says.
"By completing this project, I'm telling people you can achieve any objective if you just keep working at it."
Finding a way in
Though Pedersen's Danish passport is one of the most powerful in the world in terms of the access it offers, many visas have still been challenging to secure, especially in notoriously hard-to-visit destinations such as Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nauru and Angola.
It took more than three weeks to obtain a visa for Iran and nearly three months for Syria, which he secured with help from the Red Cross.
Eventually, he crossed the border to get to Damascus, the capital of Syria. Due to conflicts in the region at the time, he then had to find his way to Jordan on a container ship via the Gulf of Aqaba, which meant backtracking through Lebanon and Egypt.
"So it took a loop to get to Jordan, and it's been like that a few times. If you're going without flying, then you're really locked into the countries that are surrounding you. And you need to plan it well."
Pedersen poses for a selfie in Petra, Jordan.
Torbjrn (Thor) Pedersen/Once Upon A Saga
In many cases, bureaucracy made the processes all the more excruciating. At the land border with Angola, for example, he was turned away at first because he didn't speak native French.
Then they rejected his application because he used the wrong color pen. When he refiled his forms, his passport photo was wrong. He got new passport photos, but then his invitation letter was not clear enough.
Each rejection cost him weeks.
"Some of these situations were really Kafka-esque. It took so much time and lots of help from other people," says Pedersen.
The globetrotter has been giving motivational talks at corporations throughout his travels, which has helped with making influential connections.
"In some cases, CEOs with some power helped me. Other times, I talked with the consulate or got help from friends.
"Whenever I needed help someone reached out and helped me. But I always figured out a solution -- and I did it the right way. I never offered a single bribe."
A rash decision
While Pedersen is usually meticulous about planning, an episode in Cameroon sent him spiraling.
After spending multiple days jumping through hoops to enter neighboring Gabon, Pedersen could not take it anymore.
"People didn't understand what I was doing. I wanted to give up and just go home, thinking 'Why the heck am I even doing this? What's in it for anyone at this point?' I kind of lost it."
He made a rash decision to try another crossing, which required an 800-kilometer drive on dusty dirt roads in the middle of the night.
Pedersen says the positive memories of his journey dramatically outnumber the bad.
Torbjrn (Thor) Pedersen/Once Upon A Saga
At 3 a.m., a pair of headlights flashed ahead. Three uniformed men walked into the street, waving their rifles, and demanded Pedersen and his taxi driver get out of the car.
"They were armed to their teeth and drunk out of their minds. That's just a no-go situation," he recalls.
"My heart dropped. This is it. This is the end of my life. If my life ends there, they toss me in the forest, ants and animals will eat me in no time, no one will ever know. I hadn't told anyone I was going to do this."
He waited in this state of terror for 45 minutes as the men intimidated him with their rifles, fingers on triggers. Then, for no reason whatsoever, they let him go.
"We just got out of there like bats out of hell."
Months of great memories
As he attempts the impossible task of summarizing six and a half years into a highlight reel, Pedersen tells me that the positive memories dramatically outnumber the bad.
"We'd be talking for a couple of days if I were to tell you about all of the bad things that happened. But we'd need months to cover all the good things -- that's the balance."
In Hong Kong, for instance, Pedersen has encountered incredible hospitality during the global pandemic.
A family living in Sai Kung, about an hour northeast of Central, invited him to stay in their spare guest room for a few days.
That was before the world ground to a halt. It's been 86 days, and they insist he's welcome to stay as long as it takes.
Pedersen encountered similar warmth and generosity while marooned in the Solomon Islands, where a typhoon near Japan delayed his container ship.
He decided to use the extra days to explore the Western Province. While Pedersen was riding alone on a ferry, an elderly man invited him to an island called Vori Vori to experience life in his village.
A few days later, Pedersen took a ferry then a small motorized canoe to the remote island, which is home to about 100 people.
"There is no running water, no electricity, just a generator if they absolutely needed to power something. They catch the fish they eat every day, they have plenty of coconuts, you can bathe in the stream. It's an amazing place."
When the village elder learned Pedersen had a laptop, he asked if the residents could watch a movie.
That night, they powered up the generator and nearly 80 people huddled around Pedersen's computer to watch 1998 war drama "The Thin Red Line," which is set in the Solomon Islands.
"You can't plan that experience. You can't buy that. It was just astonishing," says Pedersen.
And then there's the world's natural beauty, which has left him speechless on countless occasions.
While crossing the North Atlantic on a container ship to reach Canada, they hit a terrible storm. For four days, the ship heaved in the wind.
"It was chaos. I thought we were going to sink and die. But when the storm passed, the water was like dark blue oil, so still and smooth. I have never seen an ocean like that."
The only interruptions in the glass-like surface were animals -- whales came up to breathe, dolphins jumped and played. And to cap it off, that night the skies cleared and the Northern Lights danced overhead.
Late in the journey, about half a day before they reached Canada, powerful gusts of wind swept the distinct aroma of trees and pollen across the ship's deck.
"Suddenly, you could smell trees in a very powerful way. It was as if I were standing in the forest. So after 12 days of smelling oil, metal and the ocean, suddenly we could smell Canada before we could see it."
The finish line
When looking at the sheer distance he's covered -- more than 300,000 kilometers -- Pedersen has now circled the globe seven times in the past 6.5 years.
He's reached 194 countries, with just nine to go: Palau, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka and the grand finale in Maldives.
When he reaches Maldives, he's planning a celebration with his fianc and fellow globetrotters, such as Lexi Alford, who is the youngest person to visit every country in the world, and Gunnar Garfors, one of the few people to have visited every country twice.
He's can't wait to see his fianc, who he was planning to marry in New Zealand before the pandemic froze the globe.
"My fianc has been incredibly supportive during this whole process," says Pedersen. "She's been out to visit me 21 times.
"Actually, there's a running joke-slash-tradition: I only shave it off when she comes out to see me!" he says of his impressive beard. "I haven't seen her now for seven months, so that's why it's this long."
Pedersen says his primary mission is to shed light on the inherent goodness of people.
Torbjrn (Thor) Pedersen/Once Upon A Saga
By Pedersen's estimation, even if he can finally get to Palau this summer, the remainder of his journey will take at least another 10 months to a year.
"It would be easy to just go to the airport and fly home. Sometimes I think about it. But at some point, this project stopped being about me, and started being about other people."
At its heart, he says, this is not a travel project but a people project. His primary mission is to shed light on the inherent goodness of people, on how much we have in common -- not our differences.
"People are almost always amazing. We all care about the same things: our families, our jobs, education, 'Game of Thrones.' We all like good food. We like to dance. We like to relax, we like to laugh ... highlighting these similarities is a big part of my purpose."
There are also many people depending on him to finish, in one way or another.
Over the years, he's received numerous private messages from people who have been inspired by his determination to persist in their own lives, from job-hunting to weight loss, to studying, learning a new language, or getting out of bed after losing a loved one.
"Again, and again, I've told the people who follow this project that we will get to the other side," he says.
"Today, the world might be falling apart. But, next month, the sun will be shining on my face. We made it on that ship, we got that visa, we crossed the border ... we did the impossible."
James Shaw, New Zealands climate change minister, has asked the countrys independent climate change commission to check whether its emissions targets under the Paris agreement are enough to limit global heating to 1.5C. He explains why hes prioritising the issue during a strict national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19, which could send New Zealands unemployment rate soaring.
To say that we find ourselves in an unprecedented moment is so obvious and has been so often repeated its almost become white noise. What is less obvious, however, is where we go from here.
In any significant crisis, let alone one as catastrophic as the Covid-19 pandemic, it is an entirely understandable human reflex to want things to return to normal, to go back to the way they were before.
And, when faced with economic headwinds in recent decades, the Asian financial crisis, the global financial crisis and, in our own case, the Christchurch earthquakes) successive governments the world over have directed their efforts to meeting public expectation and getting back to business as usual.
Unfortunately, one of the features of business as usual was a highly polluting and ecologically unsustainable economy on a pathway that was locking in catastrophic climate change.
Successive responses to economic crises have seen climate change and the natural environment we depend on for life on Earth as a nice-to-have, something to think about once weve got the economy back on track and theres a bit more money to go round.
This means that action on climate change keeps being deferred, as economic shocks occur on average about every ten years. It also means that, when we do collectively start feeling confident enough to start worrying about climate change again, we find that our economic recovery programmes have locked us back in to the same highly polluting pathway we were on before.
We quite simply cannot afford to do that one more time. Global CO2 emissions need to at least halve in the next 10 years, according to a 1992 treaty, the United Nations framework convention on climate change. If we spend the next few years restoring business as usual, we will have only a few years left to transform that business as usual into something else. It simply wont be able to be done.
This time, we could do it differently. This time, we could plan our recovery to create a clean-tech, high-value economy that works for everyone.
In which case, rather than willing things back to normal as quickly as possible, lets imagine something different for a moment. A future where people have everything they need to lead fulfilling, meaningful and prosperous lives. Where simple everyday tasks like making the morning coffee, to travelling to and from work, to warming our homes is powered by clean, renewable energy.
A future where electricity demand goes up but only because people are plugging in their electric vehicles. Where cheap, clean power brings significant economic benefits for small businesses, and rural communities. Above all, a future that is more equitable, more prosperous, and more innovative and all within planetary limits.
We know it is in our power to change the way we do things. Over the last few months, nearly all of us have made changes to the way we live and work in order to protect people and their loved ones around the world. Our responses to Covid-19 as parents, as friends, as neighbours have made clear just what it is that we value more than anything else.
Not only this, but we have seen the difference good governments can make to peoples lives and that we can, when we need to, make bold decisions for the collective good.
We have also been reminded in the most profound and difficult way why we must act in accordance with science.
Clearly, government spending over the next few months needs to ease the economic pressures people and businesses are feeling right now. But that doesnt mean it cannot also change the quality of economic growth and reduce its impact on the climate. Nor does it mean that governments cannot apply a climate lens to every major policy decision, as New Zealand is doing.
An economic stimulus is partly about choice. In the past, governments have made these choices based on the view that investments and values are separable. But theyre not. Our investments reflect our values.
Nearly every country in the world has committed to playing their part in a global effort to clean up our economies and avoid the worse effects of climate change.
Here in New Zealand, our parliament has unanimously enshrined the Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in domestic legislation. On Wednesday, I asked our new, politically independent, climate change commission to review whether our international target is consistent with that Paris goal.
If they conclude that there is more we need to do, the commission will provide recommendations on what changes we should make. This will ensure we are playing our part globally. I hope that other countries will do the same, if they arent already.
It is a time for governments, regions, and cities around the world to mobilise and deploy resources to tackle the climate crisis at the same time as rebuilding their economies, all whilst creating high value green jobs.
This is indeed an unprecedented moment. What we do with it will determine the quality of life for billions of people not just for the next few months or years, but for the generations to come.
James Shaw is New Zealands climate change minister and co-leader of the Green party.
When any new and dangerous infectious disease comes on the scene, theres an immediate and concerted push to develop a vaccine. For COVID-19, federal health officials have said we will have a vaccine in 12-18months.
Just last week, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci told CBS, there have been no glitches in the process and that its possible to shave a couple months offthat.
But this timeline is optimistic perhaps exceedingly so. The reasons have to do with the complexities of vaccine testing, development andproduction.
Here are the basics about where we are, how its done and where weregoing.
The human body is actually really good at fighting off infection and diseases. You can thank your immune system for not letting you die of the common cold. But some germs are so virulent that your bodys immune system cant react in time to prevent serious damage. For some people, COVID-19 falls into thiscategory.
Vaccines work by tricking your immune system into thinking your body is being attacked by a bacteria, virus or another invading germ. Your immune system mobilizes and, in the process, learns how to fight off the germ. Your immune system can retain that skill for months, years, or if youre lucky, alifetime.
The key is to give your body a version of the germ that will not actually make you sick. Creating those versions is the crux of vaccinedevelopment.
There are many different kinds of vaccines each characterized by how researchers use or alter the original bacteria or virus to keep it from making you sick. Someexamples:
Attenuated vaccines (for measles, smallpox, chickenpox): To make these, scientists weaken the original germ often so it cant continue to reproduce in your body. These vaccines can generate a lifetime of immunity but cant be used for people whose immune system is alreadyweakened.
Inactivated vaccines (for polio, hepatitis A, flu): These vaccines are created by killing the original germ. Because the germs are dead, these vaccines are very safe, but your body also doesnt attack them as vigorously as something thats alive. This is why booster shots are oftenneeded.
Toxoid vaccines (for tetanus, diphtheria): Some germs dont harm your body directly, but instead produce a toxin that causes you to get sick. To make toxoid vaccines, scientists target and weaken that toxin so your body can learn to fight itoff.
Subunit vaccines (for HPV, whooping cough, shingles, hepatitis B): This is a broad category of vaccines where researchers use only a small segment of the germ as a vaccine. One technique is removing just the skin of a germ, and then attaching it to the body of another germ so your body thinks its attacking the realthing.
These methods take a long time to develop, in part because scientists have to grow and manipulate living viruses and bacteria and make sure they are safe and effective before proceeding to clinicaltrials.
In the United States, vaccines are extensively tested before being widely released. And usually, its a process that takes severalyears.
When you make a great vaccine, it should work as good as or better than the natural infection itself (at creating immunity), said OHSU professor Mark Slifka. It should be safe very, very safe - giving high rates of protection. And then give you long term immunity - hopefully even lifelong immunity if yourelucky.
Testing starts in the development phase with animal testing. Scientists use animals at the beginning to get a sense of whether their vaccine will trigger a response from the immunesystem.
Once researchers have a vaccine that shows promise, they enter humantesting:
Phase 1: The vaccine is administered to up to 100 volunteers. Scientists and regulators are focused on safety at this stage, looking for side effects and trying to determine what size of the dose issafe.
Phase 2: The vaccine is administered to hundreds of volunteers. Here researchers are still looking at safety, but are now focusing on how the immune system is responding to the vaccine. The question here: Is itworking?
Phase 3: The vaccine is administered to an even larger group of volunteers, perhaps thousands of people. These trials compare the immunity of people given the vaccine and those who are not. Scientists are also determining the most common sideeffects.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says vaccines are only licensed if they are safe and effective and the benefits outweigh therisk.
This depends on several factors economics, the urgency of the need for a vaccine, and how common the disease is, to name afew.
Our goal is to develop vaccines that can protect at least 90% (of people vaccinated) - that would be a gold standard. But we dont always achieve that gold standard, Slifkasaid.
He said we have reached that goal with vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and hepatitis A and B. But the flu vaccine is a different story. A good year is 50% perfection, and Slifka says its often muchlower.
But because its so common when you talk about 100,000 people being infected with something, if you could have 30% protection, well only 70,000 people would be infected. But look, you saved 30,000 from that disease, hesaid.
Another measure of effectiveness for vaccines is how long they provide immunity. Some last a lifetime, but many require boosterdoses.
When youre in the middle of a pandemic, you are happy to settle for six months of protection, said Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University ofMaryland.
She says she would be thrilled with a COVID-19 vaccine that is 50%effective.
Look at the situation in New York or Louisiana or Seattle. If they could have half the number of cases, half the number of people coming to the hospital, half the number of health care workers who are sick, that would make a tremendous impact, shesaid.
There are dozens of COVID-19 vaccines in process worldwide, and theyre using a wide variety of techniques trying to find something that will work. This includes a new class of vaccines that utilize the genetic code of the harmful germ instead of the germitself.
The vaccine that is furthest along in the regulatory process is from U.S.-based biotechnology company Moderna. Its currently in Phase 1 human testing at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute inSeattle.
The new vaccine type is called a messenger RNA-based vaccine (mRNA). To produce this vaccine, scientists dont need the virus, only the genetic code. They identify a key piece of genetic information a recipe for how to make a particular protein contained in the germ. Then they make copies of the recipe in the lab. When injected, those copies get absorbed into your cells, tricking them into following that genetic recipe. Your cells start producing that virus protein, which your immune system targets as a foreign invader and learns to fight. Essentially your cells are harnessed to produce their ownvaccine.
The Moderna vaccine is furthest along in testing, in part, because the development stage for mRNA can be much quicker than other kinds of vaccines that rely on using live germs. It was also helped by the fact that China sequenced the genome for coronavirus very early on in the pandemic and shared that information with researchers around theworld.
The less encouraging news is that because the technology is so new, no mRNA vaccine has ever been licensed by the Food and DrugAdministration.
Variety is important because history shows us that the success rate for vaccine development islow.
Its certainly somewhere less than 5 or 10%, Neuzil said. You cant count on a single vaccine. We want a lot of shots on goal right now, hoping that well score with at leastone.
These are extraordinary times, with an extraordinary level of effort going towards finding avaccine.
Were thinking about having a vaccine that is licensable in about 18 months. Thats a really tremendous feat. Its achievable and I think that its reasonable, said Dr. Wilbur Chen of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
KerinSharma/OPB
But for that to happen, everything has to go to near perfection in the testingphase.
It can cost between $1 and $2 billion to produce a vaccine. And for all the vaccines that we currently have licensed, they take between eight and 16 years before they can make it to the market. So what were trying to do here is speed that up to light-year speed compared to how vaccines are typically produced, said OHSUsSlifka.
Once a vaccine is approved by federal regulators, then that opens up a new slate of challenges. Manufacturing and distribution are high on thelist.
Vaccine production facilities would have to be built or converted from existing facilities and extensively quality-tested by regulators. These facilities can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars and can take years tobuild.
Governments are stepping up to help facilitate this. For example, the U.S. government recently gave vaccine developer Moderna a $483 million grant to offset testing and help scale up the companys production of the mRNA vaccine currently in early humantesting.
By investing now in our manufacturing process scale-up to enable large scale production for pandemic response, we believe that we would be able to supply millions of doses per month in 2020 and with further investments, tens of millions per month in 2021, if the vaccine candidate is successful in the clinic, said Stphane Bancel, Modernas Chief Executive Officer, in astatement.
But even this would not meet the countrys demand to say nothing of the global demand for a COVID-19 vaccine. And this will introduce questions about who getsaccess.
Health care workers are often mentioned as getting first priority to vaccines. But beyond that, officials will have to figure out how to rationthem.
Do you vaccinate the vulnerable? Do you vaccinate the young people who might be spreading it to the vulnerable? So lots of questions come up with that. Slifkasaid.
I mean, it would be a great problem tohave.
Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center.
Extraordinary cooperation and accommodations are needed in the race to build a COVID-19 vaccine from scratch while chasing a pandemic, said members of industry and government who convened for an update on the vaccine clinical trial process.
The message came from representatives from the Food and Drug Administration, a think tank, and the nonprofit sector who provided some insight into the vaccine development process for COVID-19 at a press briefing hosted by the Commonwealth Fund.
Even in the best of times, vaccine development is not simple, said Litjen (L.J.) Tan, PhD, chief strategy officer for the Immunization Action Coalition. Ordinarily, the process can take from 10 to 20 years and cost well over a billion dollars. Many vaccines wind up being abandoned before phase 3 development just because the cost is prohibitive, he said.
Vaccines undergo extensive ongoing postmarketing surveillance even after approval, licensing, and distribution, noted Dr. Tan, adding that the development of a safe, effective vaccine is a "very complicated, significant process."
In these extraordinary times, many adjustments to the usual trial trajectory are needed, agreed all participants. To speed the process, the traditional vaccine trajectory is being accelerated and compressed; changes may include simultaneous rather than sequential clinical trials that are run in parallel. These trials may be optimized for multiple target populations at the same time, and run in different countries, explained Dr. Tan.
"We are likely going to use something called adaptive trial designs" in which results are gathered during the trial and used to modify the trial according to prespecified rules, he said. "These trials shift to accommodate data as it comes up."
Regulatory agencies are actively engaging in the process much earlier than usual, with input including how to incentivize scaling up production of vaccines and ensuring that vaccines will be fairly and equitably distributed across the globe, he added.
Esther Krofah is the executive director of FasterCures, a center within the nonprofit Milken Institute. Currently 86 different active COVID-19 vaccine projects are underway, she said, with 6 currently in clinical trials and about two dozen more expected to enter the clinical trial phase by the summer of 2020.
Many of these projects will involve a smaller biotech company or an academic research group with deep knowledge of a particular immune strategy partnering with a large pharmaceutical company that has economic capacity and global resources and reach, said Ms. Krofah.
From a policy perspective, she said, it's important for the FDA to have surge capacity with "enough arms, legs, and staff to actively provide input into clinical design and protocols of studies." The goal is to be able to review data in real-time and provide rapid feedback as studies are occurring so adaptive clinical trial design can be implemented.
As COVID-19 vaccine trials are rolled out, necessary compromises may include incorporation of real world evidence in later clinical trial stages. "There is a way to do randomized trials in the real world in situations that come up like this," said Peter Marks, MD, the FDA's director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Long-term data about vaccine efficacy may be accrued over time, once a vaccine is being administered beyond the clinical trial stage, to see if efficacy wanes over time.
However, he said, "a lot will depend on where the vaccine is and what we encounter with whether there's circulating virus or not" in terms of clinical trial design, including whether surrogate efficacy markers such as antibody production would be used.
Unvaccinated members of a population may be used as controls against a vaccinated group during an active outbreak, he said, a break from traditional trial design. "It's not perfect. I'll acknowledge right away there are certain people at the [National Institutes of Health] that would like to tell me that's a horrible idea, but I think we are going to entertain and discuss all potential designs" for COVID-19 vaccine trials, he said. "We can't out-of-hand dismiss any design here, whether real world based or evidence based."
"This may be a little unusual hearing this from the FDA," he said, "but this is possibly one of the most important things we are going to have to do in the next few years." He added, "It's unfortunately not unlikely that we will see a second wave, or maybe even a third wave, if we don't get it right."
He pointed out that there was no candidate vaccine in the pipeline when the pandemic blossomed and began its race around the globe. Current coronavirus candidates aren't useful against COVID-19. "We know that there might be some complexities in development" related to the contributions of immune enhancement to the pathogenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, he said.
The agency is currently working closely with sponsors of various candidate vaccines to take a hard look at preclinical data and trial design.
"Low efficacy could distract from capacity for more robust candidates to come forward," he said. "We'd like to encourage people to have the absolute best vaccines We hope to be able to facilitate rapid development of these," he said.
Moving forward, a whole-government approach is necessary for development and delivery of the best vaccine. Ms. Krofah elaborated that the FDA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid will need to collaborate closely as studies evolve. In particular, CMS needs to be ready with reimbursement codes, recognizing that both public and private payers will likely be providing reimbursement for COVID-19 vaccinations.
"When these vaccines get approved, we are going to have to decide who is going to pay for them," said Dr. Tan, who previously served as the director of medicine and public health at the American Medical Association. He noted that CPT coding comes through the AMA.
Dr. Marks stressed that ultimately, although treatments or prophylactic regimes against COVID-19 may be developed, "a vaccine is the most efficient way to protect large numbers of people." Though there's going to have to be a balancing act so speed doesn't come at the expense of vaccine safety and efficacy. "We are very much hoping that we can find vaccines that have relatively high levels of efficacy," he said, adding a hopeful point: "Right now there have not been mutations that have occurred ... that would alter vaccine development programs in terms of the targets they're going after."
Dr. Marks offered a wildly optimistic and then a more realistic judgment as to when a successful vaccine might emerge from the development, trial, and approval process. After acknowledging that the FDA might consider an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) if coronavirus activity is high when a candidate vaccine emerges, he said that "if everything goes perfectly," an EUA for a vaccine might be issued within 9-12 months.
"The most likely timeline and this is total speculation is that it could be 12-18 months," he said.
Ms. Krofah concurred, adding, "We're seeing the big companies put a big bet on that timeline as well." She cited Johnson & Johnson, which has committed to a $1 billion COVID-19 vaccine development program by the end of 2021.
Finally, when a vaccine does become available, who is first in line to receive it? Ms. Krofah said that it will be important for the public to know that there will be a tiering scheme for vaccine administration in the early days. Healthcare workers, emergency responders, and the particularly vulnerable may be among the first to receive protection, she said.
Kari Oakes can be reached at koakes@mdedge.com. This article first appeared on MDedge.com.
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Americans have been tolddaily that researchers are urgently working on COVID-19 vaccines, and that one might be available in 12 to 18 months. That timeline hasmade its way to high levels of government and throughnational mediacoverage.
Butone influentialbiopharmaanalyst doesn't buy itand he has plenty of reasons why.
In a 25-page note titled Sober Up! 25 Reasons Not to Count on COVID Vaccine for Herd Immunity in 1-2years, SVB Leerinkanalyst GeoffreyPorgessays itll takeseveralyearsnot monthsto developa safe and effectivevaccine and administer it to enough people for widespread protection.
We view the current expectations for a vaccine in this timeframe as the equivalent of standing 24 feet (the usual distance is 8 feet) from a dartboard, with one dart in hand, and counting on a bullseye from one throw, the analyst wrote. It is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely, that such expectations are correct.
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As the title of his note suggests, Porges doesnt have one or two concerns about the 12-to 18-month vaccine development timeline. Hislist of worries spans more than two dozen about the target itselfanovel coronavirus thats highly communicableplus concerns aboutunleashing a vaccine with limited testing.
Just consider the history of vaccines, Porges and his team point out. For more than 10 key vaccines now widely used, the time betweenpathogen discovery to vaccine approvalranged from10 years to more than 100 years. Many pivotal trialsfor recently approved shots have takenmore than 3.5 years alone, he wrote.
Add on the time it would take to manufacture and deploya quickly developed shot to the masses, and the hoped-for herd immunity looks even farther away.
Even witha highly accelerated timeline" that includes demonstratingsafety and efficacy in humans and then designing, developing and implementinga mass immunization program,getting to a herd immunity of 70% to 80%would take until2023 or 2024, Porges figures.
That's still an optimistic view, Porges wrote. Itwould require robust first pass immunization results, lenient regulation, rapid development of manufacturing and highly cooperative behavior by the American people (or coercive behavior by government) during the immunization phase.Each one of those requirements couldbring its own challenges.
The analyst isnt alonein believingcurrently discussedtimelines are optimistic. A recent AI analysisof the two most advanced programs in the U.S.Moderna andInovio, which recently entered human testingfound it couldtake 5 years to complete development for full approval. That might well change, the firm noted, for a variety of reasons; for instance, if the companies are able to hit their ambitious goals for launching later-stage trials.
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One difference this time, as Clarivate noted?Industry and others are coming together in an unprecedented fashionto advancedrugs and vaccines against the novel coronavirus. Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and many others are all working on programs, with more than 70 programs underway worldwide.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates has saidhis foundation iswilling to lose billions of dollars funding factories for sevenpromising vaccineseven ahead of the programs demonstrating efficacy. Only oneor twowill succeed, but Gates said the early investment in factories would advance manufacturing and distribution timelinesa worthwhile ventureto get vaccines to people faster.
LONDON (KWTX) A team from Oxford University announced Sunday that its close to having a COVID-19 vaccine ready for mass production.
That process typically takes several years, but the group said its vaccine will be ready for human testing by the fall.
Dr. Peter Marks, who serves as the Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a teleconference last week that whichever candidate makes it to production has to be available in mass quantities.
Ultimately, were not talking about vaccinating, you know, a few hundred thousand individuals, Marks said.
Were talking about vaccinating a few hundred million people in this country alone, and a few billion people globally.
Development of a vaccine typically takes so long because of the steps involved in getting it ready for public use, and the clinical trial phase.
Researchers say the more reliable the data on a vaccines effectiveness, the better.
But Dr. L.J. Tan, who serves as the chief strategy officer with the Immunization Action Coalition said there will variances in the effectiveness simply because there are vast differences among the adult populations in the world.
He said theyre taking that into account when it comes to choosing a vaccine for mass production.
Speed to a vaccine here is important, Tan said.
And I think, you know, we dont want to have perfection be the enemy of the good in this case.
Tan went on to explain that normally, it may take years of trials before a vaccine reaches the population, but during the pandemic, scientists can fast-track this process by doing as many of the necessary steps as possible in parallel.
The vaccine would still need approval from the federal government to be administered.
Both Marks and Tan say that can also be fast tracked in an emergency situation.
Scientists at Scripps Research Institute think theyre onto something big: Some of the latest research coming out of its Jupiter campus could lead to a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, researchers there say.
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JUPITER Scientists at Scripps Research Institute think theyre onto something big: Some of the latest research coming out of Scripps Jupiter campus could lead to a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, researchers there say.
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The findings are still preliminary and have yet to be published, but one member of the research team is expected to update the public on the project and similar efforts during a webinar Scripps will host Wednesday at 4 p.m.
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Scripps officials were not available Tuesday to discuss their findings. But Michael Farzan, a professor who co-chairs Scrippss Department of Immunology and Microbiology and who is among the scientists working on various coronavirus-related projects at Scripps Florida, is expected to address the research during Wednesdays web lecture.
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The webinar, part of the regular Front Row lecture series by Scripps, will be limited to 3,000 attendees. Those hoping to attend can register for free at scripps.edu.
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In their research, Farzan, other Scripps scientists and experts from elsewhere in the U.S. and China collaborated to simulate a hallmark of the coronavirus in lab rats.
They injected four rodents with doses that included amino acids found on the spikes seen on the now-ubiquitous images of the coronavirus.
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The amino acid collection, called receptor-binding domain, or RBD, was shown to help trigger the robust production of neutralizing antibodies, researchers wrote.
Antibodies are part of the immune response that helps the human body recover from COVID-19 and other ailments. Their presence, many scientists hope, suggests that a person will have immunity from the coronavirus at least for that wave of infection.
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These data suggest that an RBD-based vaccine for (the coronavirus) could be safe and effective, researchers wrote in a draft abstract. The preliminary findings were posted April 12 on Cold Spring Harbor Laboratorys website for unpublished life science preprints.
The RBD-based vaccine also seems to come with a smaller threat of one specific side-effect found in Zika and dengue fever vaccines that can actually ease how viruses penetrate cells, researchers wrote.
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Government leaders of many stripes from U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel to President Donald Trump to Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees view the development, production and distribution of a vaccine as central in the effort to stem the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But by a number of estimates, scientists are months away from developing a vaccine. And whatever vaccine is developed must undergo rigorous testing.
In early March, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said it could be at least 18 months until a coronavirus vaccine is publicly available. Trump offered a similar timeline on April 4.
A chief concern, Fauci said in March, was that you really need to know that it actually works because the vaccine will be administered to otherwise healthy individuals.
