"People Who Have Had Covid Should Get Single Vaccine Dose, Studies Suggest"

Kelly Baclija

Mr. Ippolito

AP Bio

February 26, 2021

Mandavilli, Apoorva. “People Who Have Had Covid Should Get Single Vaccine Dose, Studies Suggest.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/health/covid-vaccine-single-dose.html.

In “People Who Have Had Covid Should Get Single Vaccine Dose, Studies Suggest”, Apoorva Mandavilli discusses exactly what is stated in the title. Nearly 30 million people in the United States have been infected with Covid-19 so far which begs the question as to if they should still be vaccinated; two new studies suggest that they in fact should. The research proposes that just one dose of the vaccine is enough to turbocharge their antibodies and destroy the virus (and some more infectious variants). The explanation behind this discovery is that a person’s immune response to a natural infection is highly variable. Most people make copious amounts of antibodies that persist for many months. But some people who had mild or no symptoms of Covid-19 produce few antibodies, which quickly fall to undetectable levels. The vaccines “even the playing field”, as Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto, states, so that anyone who has recovered from the virus produced enough antibodies to protect against it. The latest study analyzed blood samples from people who have had Covid-19 and the findings suggested that their immune systems would have trouble fending off B.1.351, the virus variant first identified in South Africa. However, one shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine amplified the amount of antibodies in their blood by a thousandfold. In fact, the antibodies seemed to perform better than those in people who had not had Covid and had received two doses of a vaccine.

This article is particularly relevant to our society because it is likely a significant concern for those who have contracted Covid-19 to know whether or not to receive the vaccine as they have developed antibodies against it already. Furthermore, studies like the ones analyzed in this article allow people to gain a better understanding, as more and more Americans are getting vaccinated, of the vaccine against Covid-19 and its properties which would ultimately boost the knowledge we as a society have to combat this current pandemic and eventually result in us leading a normal life once again.

This article was relatively well-written and provided the reader with plenty of information as to how the vaccine works for those who have previously contracted the virus and features some quotes from experts in the field, which increases the author’s credibility. However, there was not much material pertaining to the variants of Covid-19, which were mentioned frequently throughout the article and thus it would have been beneficial to include this for the audience’s understanding. Furthermore, the author could have included some more information on the studies and how they were conducted which would also broaden the reader’s grasp. Despite this, overall, this article allowed me to learn more about the Covid vaccine and its effectiveness for those who have already contracted the virus.

Environmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as observed from space

 Willy Swenson

Current Event 13

“Environmental Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic, as Observed from Space.” ScienceDaily, 2020, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208162957.htm. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.

As different health and safety regulations keep more of us at home more frequently, COVID-19 has changed the way we live and work. According to comparisons of remote sensing data before and after the pandemic gathered by NASA, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earth-observing satellites and others, the resulting changes to our actions are already affecting the world around us in myriad ways. The article explains, deforestation patterns in some countries are changing, air pollution is declining, water quality is rising, and since the pandemic started earlier this year, snow is becoming more reflective in some areas. However, Timothy Newman, National Land Imaging Program Coordinator for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) claims, 

"But we will need more research to clearly attribute environmental change to COVID". Satellite imagery and Landsat data indicate a decline in air emissions since the lockdown. Because of the COVID-19 lockdowns, manufacturing practices in India, including collecting and crushing stone for building projects, slowed or ground to a halt. One study showed that the concentration of particulate matter (PM) 10, an air pollutant, decreased by around a third to a fourth of the pre-pandemic average in India. 

While many communities have been affected negatively by the COVID pandemic, there is a small silver lining to this virus. Our world is recovering from the years of strain and pollution humans put on it. By isolating at homes, we travel less (less emissions from cars), fly less (less emissions from planes) and we work less (less pollution from factories/mines). This is extremely important to our Earth’s environment because we are reaching a point of no return, where our pollution and damage will become irresistible. While quaretning at home is not a sustainable option for human culture and mental health, we learn very valuable lessons from this lockdown: we can improve our Earth’s environment. 

After this pandemic is over, or at least suppressed enough to where everyday life can resume, it will be important to learn from our mistakes. Instead of driving everywhere, people need to give public transportation or car pooling a try because this will reduce their carbon footprint. Not only this, we see that reducing mining in places like India can show significant improvement in air quality, so there should be significant research done in ways to make mining a sustainable practice in these areas. 

Julia Reich

Mr. Ippolito

AP Biology C Even 

2/11/21

Jesus, Erin Garcia de. “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and 

Vaccines.” Science News, 6 Feb. 2021, www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-19-coronavirus-variants-reinfection-vaccination-efforts

For my current event, I read Erin Garcia de Jesus’s article titled “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants’ Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines.” The article begins describing the vaccines we know of: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson. However, “some mutations can stymie the antibodies’ ability to latch onto the virus and prevent it from infecting cells.” This leads to great vaccines becoming essentially powerless to the new variants, found in Brazil, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. “Curbing transmission is the holy grail of vaccine effectiveness: That would give the coronavirus fewer chances to acquire potentially dangerous mutations,” -- a piece of advice millions of people fail to remember. Garcia de Jesus writes that antibodies only make up one part of the immune system’s arsenal to eliminate viruses from the body, but this alone is not enough. Social distancing and masks are the best solution to curb spreading, or else, people who have already recovered from the virus are at risk of getting infected again. The first confirmed reinfection was in August of 2020. Reinfections are difficult to prove, as a person could remain asymptomatic, however, doctors and scientists are frightened at the new strains of the virus. At the end of Garcia de Jesus’s article, she includes a Q&A with Science News and Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. Gordon answers questions, such as “when will the pandemic end?” Gordon responds with, “ It’s going to be a little bit longer than it would have been without those variants arising. But pandemics always end eventually.”

I chose to read this article as the COVID-19 virus is evidently an important topic and one of great relevance in my day to day life. As new virus variants rise, the timeline for the pandemic continues to push further back. Aubree Gordon believes the coronavirus will become endemic, a commonly circulating virus, like the flu. Erin Garcia de Jesus writes that social distancing and reducing transmission at all costs is what will end the global pandemic sooner. This is relevant to the world as people still continue to do unnecessary traveling and activities. Variants will continue to occur, and more people will die before the vaccine begins to help. 

Erin Garcia de Jesus’s article was very well written, easy to read, and demonstrated a greater understanding of the COVID-19 variants and their effects on humans. I really like how she included an interview with Aubree Gordon, an expert in her field of epidemiology. However, I would recommend including more statistics of the virus deaths, infection rates, and variant infection rates. Numbers help audiences visualize and try to understand exactly how serious a situation may be. Other than that, I thought the article was essentially perfect. 

 Henry Min

AP Bio/Current Event 12

2/3/21

Chang, Kenneth. “SpaceX's Prototype Mars Rocket Crashes in Test Flight.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/science/spacex-starship-launch.html. 

In the article, “SpaceX’s Prototype Mars Rocket Crashes in Test Flight”, author Kenneth Chang talks about how SpaceX's prototype mars rocket crashed during a test flight. Throughout the article, Mr. Chang does a great job of outlining the events that took place. On Tuesday, a test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, a huge next-generation spacecraft that Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of the private rocket company, dreams of one day sending to Mars, came to an explosive end. That brief flight, to an altitude of about six miles and then back to a landing pad, appeared to again demonstrate how the mammoth rocket would tip over on its side as it descended in a controlled belly flop back toward a landing. But when the prototype fired its engines to right itself back to a vertical orientation, it appeared that one engine did not properly ignite, and Starship hit the ground at an angle, disintegrating in a fireball, leaving a cloud of smoke rising over the test site, which is in Boca Chica, Tex, near Brownsville. On Tuesday evening, the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates rocket launches, announced that it will oversee an investigation of why the prototype crashed. Last week, SpaceX and government regulators seemed to be in a strange standoff. SpaceX had filled the propellant tanks of this prototype of Starship — its ninth one — and looked ready to launch. But then the rocket stayed on the ground when no approval from the F.A.A. arrived. Late on Monday, the F.A.A. gave permission for Tuesday’s launch, but then revealed that the December launch had occurred without the agency’s approval. SpaceX had requested a waiver to conduct that flight even though it had not shown that a pressure wave that could be generated by an explosion during the test would not pose a danger to the public. The F.A.A. denied the request. SpaceX defied the ruling and launched anyway. Even if Starship had landed perfectly, launching it without approval was a violation of the company’s license. SpaceX was also told to halt testing that could endanger the public until the company made changes that satisfied the agency. The F.A.A. said the resulting changes improved safety and were incorporated into Tuesday’s launch.

Overall, the article does a great job of giving an objective view of what happened before and after the failed test flight. I was able to fully comprehend the problems that were occurring between Elon Musk and SpaceX, and how certain rules were needed to be broken. I believe that this is relevant in today's age as traveling to other planets and possibly inhabiting them is something that humans have theorized and thought about for ages. 

Annabelle Krause - "The Antidepressant Fluvoxamine Could Keep Mild COVID-19 from Worsening."

Annabelle Krause

AP Bio/Current Event 12

2/2/21

Landhuis, Esther. “The Antidepressant Fluvoxamine Could Keep Mild COVID-19 from Worsening.” Science News, 1 Feb. 2021, www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-19-coronavirus-antidepressant-fluvoxamine-treatment.

In the article, The antidepressant fluvoxamine could keep mild COVID-19 from worsening, the author, Esther Landhuis presents the evidence from studies and preliminary clinical trials that suggest that fluvoxamine could help control COVID-19 symptoms.  This study was conducted in Berkeley, California, where a group of people affected by a COVID-19 outbreak opted to take the drug to test if it would mitigate their symptoms.  The results were astounding and quite promising; “[o]f those who opted to take fluvoxamine, none got sicker, and within two weeks, their symptoms cleared. In comparison, 12.5 percent of those who turned down the drug wound up hospitalized” (Landhuis).  Although this was a relatively small and narrow (possible environmental biases could have existed in this particular test), it is certainly promising enough to warrant ongoing verification and research from larger clinical trials.  The Fluvoxamine currently costs approximately $10, making it quite accessible compared to other, more costly treatments.  A physician, David Seftel, and an infectious disease physician-scientist, David Boulware, tested fluvoxamine during an outbreak around Thanksgiving.  They had heard about it from a presentation by COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund, which supports research to identify existing drugs that could be used to treat COVID-19.  In this presentation, the results from a fund-support trial were shared.  In their trial, they observed that of the 80 COVID-19 placed patients on a two-week fluvoxamine course, none fell seriously ill, compared to 6 of 72 patients (8.3%) who took a placebo pill.  Beyond clinical trials, Seftel sought to investigate the biochemistry behind the drug that would support the trial’s hypothesis that fluvoxamine helped with COVID-19 recovery.  He found that the drug “activate[s] a protein called the sigma-1 receptor that prevents production of chemical messengers that exacerbate inflammatory reaction” (Landhuis).  Research had already proven that this sigma-1 receptor response lowered infection rates with COVID-19 by “squelch[ing out] out-of-control immune activity and prevent[ing] blood clots” (Landhuis).  Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are testing fluvoxamine in a larger, nationwide trial with a more random sample.  The goal is to collect data from 880 people.  Overall, the article concludes that fluvoxamine, though not necessarily proven to help, likely does and can be used in individual cases prior to its confirmation as a treatment in order to help patients at risk of bad symptoms and outcomes. 

This article is extremely relevant right now, especially to Westchester, as we experience a spike in COVID-19 cases.  It is important for us as citizens to stay informed about treatments and appraised on their viability.  Our lives have been irrevocably impacted by COVID-19 for the last eleven months, and any treatment that may help ease symptoms and prevent further deaths are very important for the greater societal good.  If COVID-19 was significantly less likely to end in death or terrible symptoms with long lasting side effects, it would be a much less scary sickness.  Although somewhat unlikely, discoveries like that of fluvoxamine on COVID-19 symptoms could help the United States and other countries to open up quicker than waiting for everyone to receive both doses of the vaccine.

This article was quite easy to understand and succinct in explaining the science.  I appreciated that they explained complicated concepts, like the biochemical justification for fluvoxamine use as a mitigator of COVID-19 symptoms, in simple terms that made it possible for this very important issue to be generally understood.  I personally would have appreciated it if the author had given more of their own commentary on the relevance of these findings and the trials rather than leaving it for the reader to reason out.  I understand that there really is no conclusion to be drawn as of yet, so it may be difficult for the author to extrapolate, but it would have been more clear and had a stronger message if the author had done so.  It also would have been interesting for the author to investigate how the affordability of fluvoxamine could be relevant to making COVID-19 treatments more readily available and accessible.  Overall, it was a very interesting piece that explained a complicated idea very well.