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.
Olivia Cevasco
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology - C Even
11 February 2021
Current Event 13 - Comment on Julia Reich’s Review
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
Reich, Julia. “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines.” Bronxville AP Biology, 7 Feb. 2021, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/02/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s review of “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines” describes how the new COVID variants, such as the African strain, decrease the efficacy of the vaccines in use and says the solution is continuing to mask up and maintain social distancing so we can get vaccinated as fast as possible and prevent as much spread of the new variants as possible. I like how Julia presents the solution to the problem the new strains create. She quotes the main article and inserts a reminder, saying, ““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.” This quote connects with the reader, as we can relate to being at a moment in the pandemic where we want life to return to normal ASAP but staying safe and maintaining safe practices will end the pandemic faster in the long run. Second, I appreciate Julia’s explanation and example of what an endemic is and how COVID might become one. She said, “Aubree Gordon believes the coronavirus will become endemic, a commonly circulating virus, like the flu.” As terrifying as it sounds to have COVID around year after year, like the flu, this quote gives the reader an image of the long-term implications of the virus: that it might never really be gone for good. Third, I commend Julia on her critique of the main article and its lack of statistical data to support the conclusion that new variants lower the vaccine efficacy. Julia says that “However, I would recommend including more statistics of the virus deaths, infection rates, and variant infection rates,” and this would be useful for the reader to understand the severity of the problem new variants create on the COVID timeline.
To improve her review, I’d encourage Julia to talk about some specific variants and how testing is conducted for them. She said that “This leads to great vaccines becoming essentially powerless to the new variants, found in Brazil, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.” For instance, the UK does more testing for variants than we do in the US, so the transmission of new variants might be a larger problem than we think it is in America. In addition, I’d encourage Julia to clarify some of her points. She said that “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,” and as a reader, I started wondering what are the other parts of the immune system’s arsenal to eliminating viruses, other than antibodies? Perhaps explaining this could give the reader more insight into the bigger picture of how their immune system fights viruses, such as COVID-19.
I chose to comment on Julia’s review because the new COVID variants are a hot topic on the news and in my family conversations. My sister is immunocompromised, so contracting the stronger African Strain of COVID is certainly a concern that we hope to avoid through our social distancing and mask-wearing practices. I learned that vaccines don’t prevent us from getting all COVID mutations, rather they target a specific variety of the virus, so more mutations means that we would need more vaccines and they would be less effective overall. The knowledge I gained from reading Julia’s review will help me understand that it’s vital to vaccinate as much as we can as fast as we can so we can hopefully prevent the new strains from wreaking havoc.
Annabelle Krause
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology - C Even
Feb. 11, 2021
Current Event 13
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
Reich, Julia. “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines.”
Bronxville AP Biology, 7 Feb. 2021, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/02/julia-reich-mr.html.
Overall, Julia wrote a very strong review of the article, “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines.” Primarily, Julia did a good job of supplying context and explaining why this article was relevant to our lives, giving the reader enough information to understand why they should care without overdoing it. She discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to affect our lives and the importance of variants to reaching immunity and moving past the pandemic. She did a really good job of being succinct; her review was not overly verbose. She gave the reader enough information to decide whether they wished to further investigate the topic. Julia also did a really good job of defining terms that may not be commonly used or commonly known. For example, she wrote that “the coronavirus will become endemic, a commonly circulating virus, like the flu.” This simple definition was really helpful as a reader because I was able to understand what she was talking about without doing my own research. It is also probably a term I should know, so I learned something new from her article. Lastly, she uses direct quotes from the article to support her own assertions. After her discussion of why social distancing, masks, and the vaccine are all so important and must work in tandem, she used this quote from the article: “Curbing transmission is the holy grail of vaccine effectiveness: That would give the coronavirus fewer chances to acquire potentially dangerous mutations.” This was very helpful for me as a reader because it showed that scientists and experts agreed with her point.
Although her review was strong overall, there are a few things that Julia could have done to make it better. Primarily, she focused heavily on reinfection, and it would have been nice if she had spoken more about vaccines, since the title mentioned it. The information on reinfection was very interesting, but I was surprised that there was not more of a discussion of the vaccines’ efficacy, and I would’ve appreciated her commentary on that. Also, it would have been nice if Julia had developed some of her points and ideas further. She wrote that “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.” This is an interesting idea, but it was not fully explained. As a reader, I was left wondering what the other parts of the immune system’s arsenal are. If Julia had done her own research here, it would have elevated the quality of her review. I think both of these would have deepened her review and my understanding of the topics at hand.
I chose this article because it is very relevant, and I am interested in the science behind ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, COVID-19 is really relevant to all of our lives, so learning about different scientific approaches to addressing COVID-19 and the problems with these approaches as the virus develops is both interesting and relevant to my life. I think this review really made clear to me that there are a lot of potential issues ahead, and it really reinforced my understanding of the importance of masks and social distancing. Overall, I really enjoyed Julia’s discussion of the COVID-19 variants and their effect, and I found it highly informative.
Kelly Baclija
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
February 11, 2021
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
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/02/julia-reich-mr.html#comment-form
Julia’s article on “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants’ Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines” by Erin Garcia de Jesus. She starts off by giving some background information that helps the reader understand what will be discussed-- “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.’”. Next, she includes a Q&A at the end of her summary which may provide the audience information for the unanswered questions; “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.’” Finally, Julia states an insightful claim, which is that “Aubree Gordon believes the coronavirus will become endemic, a commonly circulating virus, like the flu”. This provides the reader with an important piece of information to help understand the coronavirus pandemic.
Although her article is well written, Julia has a few areas of improvement. Firstly, as she mentions that recommending “including more statistics of the virus deaths, infection rates, and variant infection rates”; this would allow the reader to get a better grasp of the significance and urgency of the pandemic. Additionally, I believe that the audience would have benefited from an explanation of the biological aspects behind how a virus can mutate and develop into different strains (with potentially different symptoms and abilities to spread faster).
I read this article because I thought it would be beneficial to learn more about the coronavirus variants and what that could mean for our society going forward. I learned that vaccines may not be very effective against new strains and thus the pandemic could last longer than we expect, and also the fact that it is likely the virus could come back every year, similar to the flu. This will change my perspective because I further understand that it is especially important to take the necessary precautions in order to prevent the pandemic from becoming even more damaging to our society.
Hugh Duffy
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
February 10, 2021
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
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/02/julia-reich-mr.html#comment-form
Julia’s review of “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants’ Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines” Was very well-written and intriguing. I thought it was very interesting how she included a section for questions that the reader may have. This helped me better understand the article without having to build a foundational background on the information.
I thought Julia’s review was well-written and informative, but there are some aspects that she could improve on. In my opinion, the Covid-19 topic has been milked in the media, and I would’ve liked to see her approach the information from a strictly biological perspective. Without talking about numbers or the effect on humanity, the topic is able to escape the web of overuse, and become more interesting.
I clicked on this review because I was interested in seeing the effects that variants of the virus may have on the national recovery plan. I knew that Julia’s current events are generally well-written, and are always an interesting read. I also wanted to know if the efficacy rates of the new vaccines would change over time due to viral mutation. Overall, I thought Julia’s current event was very interesting and informative.
Holden D’Avico
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
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
Reich, Julia. “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines.”
Bronxville AP Biology, 7 Feb. 2021, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/02/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s review of “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and
Vaccines” is clear and informative. The first aspect that was well presented is in the first paragraph when Julia mentions the relevance of the new variants in fighting the pandemic. She mentions that the vaccines that the government spent billions of dollars on, the vaccines that scientists and researchers have spent countless hours formulating, will all go to waste if the new variants spread too far. After reading this, I realize that the pandemic is very difficult to end. The second aspect that was well presented is in the second paragraph where Julia describes why this information is relevant to our world and her life. As mentioned, the timeline for the pandemic has been pushed back since the very beginning and we can only hope for a return to some sense of normalcy soon. The final aspect that was well presented is in the third paragraph where Julia suggests that the author include more statistics so that the reader can conceptualize the seriousness of our situation based on numbers and rates. I agree that this would have benefited the reader tremendously.
My first suggestion is to elaborate more on the structure of new strains and how they differ from the original virus. Julia quotes the author describing the new strains: “some mutations can stymie the antibodies’ ability to latch onto the virus and prevent it from infecting cell,” (Reich 1). It would’ve been interesting if the actual structure of the new strains was described in detail. My second suggestion is to go more in depth about the timeline that is mentioned. Julia mentions that the timeline of the pandemic has been pushed back and eventually Covid-19 will shift into an endemic. It would’ve benefited the reader if Julia described this timeline in greater detail.
One fact that I was surprised by is that the first recorded reinfection was in August 2020. I thought that if you caught the virus, you would be immune to it for months and months. However, August is just 5 months after the beginning of the pandemic in most states which surprised me. It is unfortunate that you could catch the virus multiple times in such rapid succession.
Angelinna Faisca 4/10/21
ReplyDeleteJesus, Erin Garcia de. “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines.” Science News, 6 Feb. 2021,
https://bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com
I think that Julia does a good job on describing the chances that Covid-19 has to mutate. She also gives really good background information on what she is talking about. She also starts by naming all the vaccines that we have, including the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. She also engages us by putting questions that were asked and answered by the doctors, such as “When will the pandemic end?” She also makes a good effort to include the dangers of reinfection of Covid-19, which she mentions, came up in the month of August. Julia also makes a good point of including the importance of social distancing, which she further backed up by saying that social distancing helps prevent the spread of Covid-19. Overall, she did a good job on giving details to the mutations of the coronavirus.
I think that she could have included more statistics and numbers to really show the article’s importance,if it had any. Also talking about the way the trials were held could also have had an impact on the way her information had an impact on the reader. Also including how a mutation occurs in the virus, explaining how a mutation could be prevented. Overall, again, she did a good job on explaining the article and identifying its key points.
Obviously, these new strains are a cause for chaos, even though a vaccine is out, there is still a high chance that someone will contract Covid-19, because there are still cases of people getting reinfected, and hopefully these new strains will not cause such a big mess as the original strain has. This article was also very interesting because it gave you a look from other countries as well, like the UK, Africa and Brazil, so overall it is interesting to get input about variants from around the world. Either way, this was a good review of this article.
Willy Swenson
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
Current Event 14
Comment
“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. Accessed 25 Feb. 2021.
Reich, Julia. “Bronxville AP Biology.” Blogspot.com, 25 Feb. 2021, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2021/02/julia-reich-mr.html#comment-form. Accessed 25 Feb. 2021.
Julia’s review of “What We Know about Coronavirus Variants' Effect on Reinfection and Vaccines” was complete in every aspect. She had many strengths in her review. One of the strengths of the review was the full summarization of the article. Julia’s complete summary kept the reader informed on the topic she was writing about and was essential to understanding the review as a whole. Without her strong summary of the article, the reader would have trouble understanding Julia’s perspective on the topic at hand and making their own conclusions about it. As well as this, Julia did a great job intertwining her own opinions of the topic into the article. Using background information about Julia’s expertise in the subject, she is very well informed about the medical field of the virus, and as a result has great insight into the topic. Finally, another strength of the review was that Julia had a great tone during the review. It was professional, yet creative and well received.
Despite the many strengths of this review, there were areas of improvement for Julia in this review. While reading, I noticed that Julia was very broadly describing the mutations. After reading the original article for myself, it mentions more than what Julia had talked about. I think it is important to include all information in the review to give the reader the opportunity to make connections for themselves. While Julia’s summary of the article was on point, it is important to note that she did not include enough quotations from the article. While I clearly understood her points, it is always important to include many quotations/direct evidence from credible sources to anchor opinions in logic. This aspect of the review could easily be improved by adding 1-2 quotes in support of her claims or during her summary.
In total, the review was very comprehensive and I really enjoyed reading about Julia’s point of view on the topic. I had heard about the new strains entering the US, so it was interesting to read more about this fascinating topic. It is always important to bring awareness to the new strains of COVID and to always remain vigilant during these trying times.