February 19, 2021 • 20 mins
Texas has been the story of the week… battered by a winter storm that left millions without power. While much of the power has been restored after days in freezing temperatures, there is still a food and water crisis there. It has also exposed huge flaws in the Texas power grid when it comes to extreme weather events. Josh Lederman, correspondent at NBC News, joins us for how huge demand for power and power plants that failed to produce that power led to a power grid failure.
Next, the latest data from Pfizer shows that its vaccine is less effective against the South African variant of coronavirus. While clinical trials have not been done, lab experiments show that there is about a two-thirds drop in the neutralization powers against this variant. Andrew Joseph, reporter at STAT News, joins us for what this means for the current batch of vaccines we have.
Finally, while the main concern with variants right now are those from the U.K. and South Africa, scientists are finding at least seven variants that originated here. More concerning is that they are all evolving in the same way, potentially becoming more contagious. These other strains are not as prevalent yet, but it makes the case for better surveillance on how the virus is changing in the population. Carl Zimmer, columnist at the NY Times, joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, February nine. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. Texas has been the
story of the week, battered by a winner storm that
left millions without power. While much of the power has
been restored after days and freezing temperatures, there is still
(00:20):
a food and water crisis there. It has also exposed
huge flaws in the Texas Power Group when it comes
to extreme weather events. Josh Letterman, correspondent at NBC News
joins US for how huge demand for power and power
plants that failed to produce that power lead to a
grid failure. Next, the latest data from Fiser shows that
its vaccine is less effective against the South African varying
(00:42):
of the coronavirus. While clinical trials have yet to be done,
lab experiments show that there's about a two thirds drop
in the neutralization powers against the variant. Andrew Joseph, reporter
at STAT News, joins US for what this means for
the current batch of vaccines we have. Finally, the main
concern with variants right now are those from the UK
and South Africa. Scientists are finding at the seven variants
(01:06):
that originated here. More concerning is that they are all
evolving in the same way, potentially becoming more contagious. These
other strains are not as prevalent yet, but it makes
the case for better surveillance and how the virus is
changing in our population. Carl Zimmer, calumnists at The New
York Times, joins us for more It's moves without the noise.
(01:26):
Let's dive in. Texans deserve answers about why these shortfalls
occurred and how they're going to be corrected, and Texas
will get those answers. Joining us now is Josh Letterman,
correspondent at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Josh, great
to be with you. Texas has been the story of
(01:48):
the week. They were hit with a huge winter storm.
Really caught everybody off guard. It seems like at its peak,
at the peak of all the stuff that was going on,
the power just totally buckled under the pressure of the
extreme weather. I think four million homes were blacked out.
They had no power that lasted for a few days.
(02:09):
I think for the most part, now most of the
state has gotten a lot of their power back. There's
still a few hundred thousand that don't have power, but
that's kind of changing. They're working on all of this.
But what happened with the energy grid there, From my understanding,
it's a lot of different things. There was blame thrown
on wind and solar farms things like that, but that's
not the complete picture. I mean, the state has its
(02:31):
own independent grid, independent of the United States everywhere else.
That's how Texas wanted it. But there's a natural gas
that figures into this, coal plants that figure into this.
It was just a mess overall. So Josh, help us
walk through what some of the state was going through,
especially with the power grid. Well, that's exactly right. It
was a whole combination of many different factors. You can
think of energy systems like supply and demand, and here
(02:54):
in Texas you had a real one to punch where
the demand was off of charts because you had so
many people freezing in their homes, turning up the heat
trying to warm their homes and businesses creating all kinds
of demand for electricity. And then on the supply side,
you just did not have enough power to go around
because you had so many power generators that were knocked
(03:16):
offline because of the frigid weather. And although initially you
had some politicians in Texas who were blaming the fact
that some wind turbines that would normally be genering electricity
had iced over and were not able to produce electricity. Really,
the vast majority of the problem about why they didn't
have enough power to go around in Texas had to
do with those traditional sources. We call them thermal sources,
(03:40):
but we're talking natural gas whole, and even a nuclear
plant that was knocked offline. In the case of those
natural gas plants, which make up a large amount of
the energy supply in Texas, you had issues like the
pipes that bring the natural gas to those plants freezing,
the fact that the states had to make sure that
homes got gas to heat their homes before they supplied
(04:01):
it to the power plants that use that gas to
make power, and in fact, looking at what the authorities
they're planned for on a cold day for what they need,
renewable sources like wind and soul are actually performed better
or compared to their expectations than did the old traditional
sources like coal and natural gas. Tell me a little
bit about their independent grid and why they're not attached
(04:25):
to the rest of the US. And then the other
problem was that weatherization efforts. They just really didn't make
the attempt to go full bore on it. They only
were kind of preparing for peak demand, like peak Winner
demand that they thought they could get through it. But
the Winner storm was much worse than they anticipated and
they just were not able to meet that demand later. Yeah,
(04:45):
that's right, And those two things you just outlined are
directly connected, because the fact that the energy generation equipment
in Texas was not weatherized is a direct results from
the fact that they do have this independent energy rid
So Texas they didn't want to be part of sort
of the national system in which you basically have a
(05:06):
huge network on the east side of the country and
one on the west side of the country. It's all interconnected,
so if power isn't really being generated in one part
of the country, they can borrow at a time of
need from another part and kind of equal everything out.
That can't happen with Texas because it's disconnected from that grid,
and they really wanted their independence from the federal government.
(05:28):
This is a state where politicians for years have talked
about seceding from the US. They value their independence. But
one of the things that means is that the grid
there in Texas. It's not subject to regulation from what's
known as FIRK, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which says,
if you're going to have power lines that cross state lines,
(05:48):
you're gonna have to follow certain rules like making sure
that your power plants are able to withstand really cold temperatures,
really hot temperatures, be able to operate under these conditions.
Tech just didn't have to follow those regulations because they
kind of went on their own with their Texas energy
grid and as a result, they made the decision and
(06:08):
not to take the kinds of steps such as weatherizing
their gas plants, and they're putting installation on pipes, putting
special coatings on their windmills that would make them able
to operate even when you have all of this ice
and cold temperatures. It really shines a light on what
happens in these extreme weather events, which we keep seeing
more and more scientists predict this is going to happen more,
(06:31):
and what do we rely on now. Batteries are still
a long way off from being a chief source of
power storage, especially in these big states like this, and
as I mentioned, you know, just climate change, these big
weather events keep happening more and more and take a
toll on these power grids. That's absolutely right, and we
should note you know, it's difficult to attribute any one
(06:52):
particular weather event to climate change, but climate scientists tell
us the kind of thing we're seeing in Texas is
certainly more likely to happen in the future as the
planet gets warmer and the climate less stable. And beyond that,
even though the power issues in this case did not
stem from wind and solar, as we move as a
(07:13):
nation towards more reliance on renewable sources like wind and
solar so that we can stop admitting as much and
try to prevent further climate change, those sources are going
to have some issues, such as the fact that the
sun doesn't shine twenty four hours a day, the wind
isn't always blowing, and that's why our energy experts tell
us that we're going to need to do a lot
(07:34):
more as far as resilience, including those batteries that you mentioned.
We're gonna need to have ways to store power when
we are generating it so that we can release it
onto the system when we need it most and might
not be able to generate it. That technology is coming
very quickly. It's developing. It's still very expensive, but it's
the kind of thing that major companies are working hard
(07:55):
to try to get scaled up so that we can
have more reliable system and hopefully we prevent folks in
Texas and everywhere else in the US from having to
go through things like this ever in the future. Josh Letterman,
correspondent at NBC News, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. It evades the protection from some
(08:21):
of the monoclonal antibodies, and it diminishes somewhat the capability
and the effectiveness of the vaccine to block it. It
doesn't eliminate it, but it diminishes it by multiple folds.
Joining us now is Andrew Joseph, reporter at STAT News.
Thanks for joining us. Andrew, thanks so much. One of
the things we had been concerned about for some time
(08:41):
now is the rise of these new coronavirus variants and
the vaccines effectiveness against them. We've been hearing that they
might be more transmissible, and with the South African variant,
we heard that it could reduce the efficacy of the vaccines. Well,
now we're getting a little bit of data to support that.
Fiser is saying that their vaccine loses some potency against
(09:04):
this South African variant. Specifically, they didn't do like clinical trials,
these were lab experiments, but Andrew tell us a little
bit more about it. So, with the rise of these
variants that appear to have some effect, whether it's on
immunity or transmissibility, the vaccine makers have been doing tests
to look at how well their vaccines stack up against
(09:25):
the different mutations and the different variants. And what fighter
Um and its partner beyond Tech reported yesterday was that,
and this is taken from blood from people who were
previously vaccinated. They basically take that blood and see how
well it stands up against the variant in in lab experiments,
and basically it showed that it showed a drop in
the blood's ability to neutralize the virus compared to other
(09:46):
forms of the coronavirus. And what that means is a
little hard to tell because this is just a lab
experiment in a way, But basically other vaccines that have
been tested against this variant called B one three one
in real world settings have also shown a decline in
an effectiveness. So there is some sense that this variant
maybe not be quite as good at a target as
other forms of the coronavirus. What about Maderna because Maderna
(10:10):
and FISER are the most closely related type of vaccines,
they're both these m RNA vaccines. So both Maderna and
FISER finished their clinical trials before this variant and some
of these other variants that people have probably heard about emerged,
so they're similarly. There's not clinical data with the Maderna vaccine.
Maderna Advisor have the to authorized vaccines in the US,
(10:30):
and they finished their clinical trials before this variant and
other variants that people have probably heard about sort of emerged,
so there aren't clinical data with them. But Maderna last
month reported something similar as Viser did yesterday and that
in lab experiments the blood taken from people who had
received the Maderna vaccine didn't neutralize this variant, the B
one three one variant, as well as other forms of
(10:51):
the coronavirus. What exactly that means is again hard to
hire to know for sure, but again it just sort
of adds to the evidence that this variant has some
sort of escape from the vaccines. What we're seeing next
is and we heard about this already that some of
these vaccine makers are working on booster shots to target
the variant. You know, at least with the case of
fiser maderna, they can tweak the entire vaccine to make
(11:15):
it stand up hopefully to this and other variants as well.
So these are kind of the next steps and tweaking
the way the vaccine works itself. Different companies are sort
of looking at what the next generation covid vaccines might be.
They might be more designed off of this specific variant,
or they might sort of be designed to target multiple
strains of the coronavirus. So that is ongoing, and you
(11:37):
know that's that's a process that's done with other vaccines.
It's not a perfect comparison, but every year the flu
shot is sort of reformulated based on the strains they
think are going to be circulating in a given season.
So there is some know how to do this. They'll
have to work with regulators as well. I mean, I
guess the thought process isn't that they will go through
full on clinical trials all over again. I mean, it's
(12:00):
already approved. These are just tweaks, so they might be
able to push them through faster too, right, right, exactly,
and so regulators like the FDA are they've publicly said
they're trying to figure out what they might require from
sort of updated vaccines, but again, this is something that
they have some experience with and might apply something similar
like to their flu protocol. All that being said, obviously
(12:21):
we should all still be getting the current vaccines in
whatever form they're in. That's why they're working on these
booster shots. And it's not like it doesn't provide no
protection at all. It's just that it might slip through
a little bit more. But that's still very important that
we should still be getting the vaccines in their current
form exactly. I think, first of all, in the US,
this variant B one three one, it's in the US,
(12:42):
but it's for now that could change, appears to be
circulating at pretty low levels. The other thing is that
even in the with the vaccines that have clinical data
like from Johnson and Johnson that shows the vaccine loses
some of its effectiveness against this variant, it's not like
an all or nothing thing. It will likely provide a
good amount of protection, maybe not the same amount of
protection as if you were exposed to a different variant.
(13:04):
And what that means is like maybe it still prevents
you from getting really sick or from dying, but you
might just be more likely to have like a sort
of a symptomatic case of COVID. So there's like some
gray areas and nuance here. It's not like vaccines don't
either work or they don't work. It's also a matter
of like what they're blocking, whether it's mild disease versus
severe disease, and sort of the rate at which they
do that. And the South African variant is the more
(13:26):
concerning one right now, but you're right, it's it's not
as prevalent as the UK variant. The CDC said, I
think by the end of March that that one could
be the dominant strain here in the United States. Have
we seen any of the similar type of research when
it comes to the effectiveness of the vaccines on that string,
the UK string, that variant it's called B one one seven.
It is spreading pretty well in the US and as
(13:47):
you said, will likely become dominant late next month into April.
So far, it seems that if there is any effect
on vaccine effectiveness, it's minor at that but the data
are pretty limited. But so far doesn't seem to be
sort of have the same escape potential that the B
one three one variant does. Andrew Joseph, reporter at STAT News,
(14:08):
thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much.
There are some mutations at the very tip of the
spike that helped them to grab onto cells like it's
they're almost like they're stickier. This mutation that is in
(14:28):
the seven lineages is somewhere else. It's down near the
base of the spy. Joining us now is Carl Zimmer,
columnists at the New York Times. Thanks for joining us, Carl,
Thanks for having me. We've been seeing a lot of
good news bad news with the coronavirus. We're seeing infection
rates drop, hospitalizations go down, all great news. But the
big concern has always been these variants that have been
(14:49):
popping up right now, specifically the ones out of the
UK and South Africa. But a new study said that
we have about seven different virus variants that are found
here in the United States. They all carry the same mutation.
Karl tell us what we're seeing here in the US.
What we're seeing is this virus basically probing our biology
(15:10):
and evolving new ways to take advantage of it. So
there are new mutations that are popping up and scientists
are just desperately trying to figure out which ones are
making them more of a threat to us. So this
latest development is particularly striking because you have several different
lineages in the United States, all of which have gained
the same mutation of the exact same spot in the
(15:32):
exact same gene, and they're all growing. They're still pretty rare,
but they're all steadily seemed to be growing, and so
that suggests that maybe this mutation is making them more contagious.
That's been the concern obviously with the two other big
variants we're hearing about from the UK and South Africa.
And these mutations always end up having to do something
with that spike protein, the way the virus latches onto
(15:55):
us and then starts replicating in our body. So where
are we seeing these variants in the United States, and
then how we're how is this mutation working with them?
At this point, these seven variants are sprinkled across the country.
There's some indication that maybe a couple of them started
in the South Stormware South or Southwest, but it's really
(16:16):
hard to tell because we just don't do enough surveillance
of variance yet. We're really behind the ball with that.
But as you say, a lot of the key mutations
that we're seeing involved this protein that sticks off the
surface of the virus called spike. Now there are some
mutations at the very tip of the spike that helped
them to grab onto cells like it's they're almost like
(16:38):
they're stickier. This mutation that is in the seven lineages
is somewhere else. It's down near the base of the spike,
but that might have something to do with what happens
after the virus sticks to a sell. What happens then
is that it has these basically these sort of harpoons
that shoot out from the base of the spike and
latch onto the cell and pull the cell and the
(17:01):
virus together so they confuse. And it looks like this
mutation conceivably might make it easier for those harpoons to deploy.
You made mention of surveillance and how much surveillance we
do here in the United States. I mean, a lot
of this really calls for just so much more of that.
How the virus is changing within our own population here
(17:23):
and we're just not doing enough of that we need
better coordination between state local officials and across the country.
You made note in your article about how these variants
were kind of discovered. One doctor uploaded this to an
online database. Then he got contacted from a doctor in
another state and they were comparing and contrasting and say, oh,
these variants have the same mutation. So that's how they're coordinating.
(17:46):
That's how they're finding out that there's all this commonality.
They're kind of working semi independently, and they are working
on really shoestring budgets and they're only often in many states,
they're getting a tiny free actually one percent of all
of the positive corona virus tests, so they're missing a lot.
But you know, every now and then they're catching these
(18:07):
things and noticing a pattern, and we need to be
just doing that and doing it a lot more, and
scientists say, just get ready for more. This expect that
new mutations, new variants are gonna be popping up, you know,
as we've seen some obviously will be more successful than others,
as we've seen with the UK variants. I think the
CDC said that by the end of March or so,
(18:28):
that that could be the dominant strain here in the
United States. So it's not that these multiple variants might
become the dominant one. But the virus is always mutating.
We've been here before. This is what influenza does in
its own particular way. And the CDC and other government
organizations are very well set up to keep track of
how influenza mutates and shifts, and then they respond very
(18:52):
quickly with new kinds of public health measures for vaccines
or to be on guard for outbreaks. So we just
need to be doing that for coronavirus. As you mentioned,
these are just kind of sprinkled across the US right now.
There's no indication that one of these seven variants are
going to start picking up or anything. We don't know
enough about them yet. We don't even know their biology
very well. So scientists are now doing experiments with viruses
(19:15):
that carry these particular mutations just to try to figure
out what does this really matter. There's so many basic
questions about this virus. We just don't have answers to
Carl Zimmer Calumnus at The New York Times, thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you. That's it for today.
(19:37):
Join us on social media at Daily Dive pod on
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in Allow a sudden I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever
you get your podcast. This episode of The David Divers
produced by Dick Right and engineered by Tony Sarrentina. I'm
Astar premiers and this was your daily dive, Bud Fack
It's Friday, February nine. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. Texas has been the
story of the week, battered by a winner storm that
left millions without power. While much of the power has
been restored after days and freezing temperatures, there is still
(00:20):
a food and water crisis there. It has also exposed
huge flaws in the Texas Power Group when it comes
to extreme weather events. Josh Letterman, correspondent at NBC News
joins US for how huge demand for power and power
plants that failed to produce that power lead to a
grid failure. Next, the latest data from Fiser shows that
its vaccine is less effective against the South African varying
(00:42):
of the coronavirus. While clinical trials have yet to be done,
lab experiments show that there's about a two thirds drop
in the neutralization powers against the variant. Andrew Joseph, reporter
at STAT News, joins US for what this means for
the current batch of vaccines we have. Finally, the main
concern with variants right now are those from the UK
and South Africa. Scientists are finding at the seven variants
(01:06):
that originated here. More concerning is that they are all
evolving in the same way, potentially becoming more contagious. These
other strains are not as prevalent yet, but it makes
the case for better surveillance and how the virus is
changing in our population. Carl Zimmer, calumnists at The New
York Times, joins us for more It's moves without the noise.
(01:26):
Let's dive in. Texans deserve answers about why these shortfalls
occurred and how they're going to be corrected, and Texas
will get those answers. Joining us now is Josh Letterman,
correspondent at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Josh, great
to be with you. Texas has been the story of
(01:48):
the week. They were hit with a huge winter storm.
Really caught everybody off guard. It seems like at its peak,
at the peak of all the stuff that was going on,
the power just totally buckled under the pressure of the
extreme weather. I think four million homes were blacked out.
They had no power that lasted for a few days.
(02:09):
I think for the most part, now most of the
state has gotten a lot of their power back. There's
still a few hundred thousand that don't have power, but
that's kind of changing. They're working on all of this.
But what happened with the energy grid there, From my understanding,
it's a lot of different things. There was blame thrown
on wind and solar farms things like that, but that's
not the complete picture. I mean, the state has its
(02:31):
own independent grid, independent of the United States everywhere else.
That's how Texas wanted it. But there's a natural gas
that figures into this, coal plants that figure into this.
It was just a mess overall. So Josh, help us
walk through what some of the state was going through,
especially with the power grid. Well, that's exactly right. It
was a whole combination of many different factors. You can
think of energy systems like supply and demand, and here
(02:54):
in Texas you had a real one to punch where
the demand was off of charts because you had so
many people freezing in their homes, turning up the heat
trying to warm their homes and businesses creating all kinds
of demand for electricity. And then on the supply side,
you just did not have enough power to go around
because you had so many power generators that were knocked
(03:16):
offline because of the frigid weather. And although initially you
had some politicians in Texas who were blaming the fact
that some wind turbines that would normally be genering electricity
had iced over and were not able to produce electricity. Really,
the vast majority of the problem about why they didn't
have enough power to go around in Texas had to
do with those traditional sources. We call them thermal sources,
(03:40):
but we're talking natural gas whole, and even a nuclear
plant that was knocked offline. In the case of those
natural gas plants, which make up a large amount of
the energy supply in Texas, you had issues like the
pipes that bring the natural gas to those plants freezing,
the fact that the states had to make sure that
homes got gas to heat their homes before they supplied
(04:01):
it to the power plants that use that gas to
make power, and in fact, looking at what the authorities
they're planned for on a cold day for what they need,
renewable sources like wind and soul are actually performed better
or compared to their expectations than did the old traditional
sources like coal and natural gas. Tell me a little
bit about their independent grid and why they're not attached
(04:25):
to the rest of the US. And then the other
problem was that weatherization efforts. They just really didn't make
the attempt to go full bore on it. They only
were kind of preparing for peak demand, like peak Winner
demand that they thought they could get through it. But
the Winner storm was much worse than they anticipated and
they just were not able to meet that demand later. Yeah,
(04:45):
that's right, And those two things you just outlined are
directly connected, because the fact that the energy generation equipment
in Texas was not weatherized is a direct results from
the fact that they do have this independent energy rid
So Texas they didn't want to be part of sort
of the national system in which you basically have a
(05:06):
huge network on the east side of the country and
one on the west side of the country. It's all interconnected,
so if power isn't really being generated in one part
of the country, they can borrow at a time of
need from another part and kind of equal everything out.
That can't happen with Texas because it's disconnected from that grid,
and they really wanted their independence from the federal government.
(05:28):
This is a state where politicians for years have talked
about seceding from the US. They value their independence. But
one of the things that means is that the grid
there in Texas. It's not subject to regulation from what's
known as FIRK, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which says,
if you're going to have power lines that cross state lines,
(05:48):
you're gonna have to follow certain rules like making sure
that your power plants are able to withstand really cold temperatures,
really hot temperatures, be able to operate under these conditions.
Tech just didn't have to follow those regulations because they
kind of went on their own with their Texas energy
grid and as a result, they made the decision and
(06:08):
not to take the kinds of steps such as weatherizing
their gas plants, and they're putting installation on pipes, putting
special coatings on their windmills that would make them able
to operate even when you have all of this ice
and cold temperatures. It really shines a light on what
happens in these extreme weather events, which we keep seeing
more and more scientists predict this is going to happen more,
(06:31):
and what do we rely on now. Batteries are still
a long way off from being a chief source of
power storage, especially in these big states like this, and
as I mentioned, you know, just climate change, these big
weather events keep happening more and more and take a
toll on these power grids. That's absolutely right, and we
should note you know, it's difficult to attribute any one
(06:52):
particular weather event to climate change, but climate scientists tell
us the kind of thing we're seeing in Texas is
certainly more likely to happen in the future as the
planet gets warmer and the climate less stable. And beyond that,
even though the power issues in this case did not
stem from wind and solar, as we move as a
(07:13):
nation towards more reliance on renewable sources like wind and
solar so that we can stop admitting as much and
try to prevent further climate change, those sources are going
to have some issues, such as the fact that the
sun doesn't shine twenty four hours a day, the wind
isn't always blowing, and that's why our energy experts tell
us that we're going to need to do a lot
(07:34):
more as far as resilience, including those batteries that you mentioned.
We're gonna need to have ways to store power when
we are generating it so that we can release it
onto the system when we need it most and might
not be able to generate it. That technology is coming
very quickly. It's developing. It's still very expensive, but it's
the kind of thing that major companies are working hard
(07:55):
to try to get scaled up so that we can
have more reliable system and hopefully we prevent folks in
Texas and everywhere else in the US from having to
go through things like this ever in the future. Josh Letterman,
correspondent at NBC News, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. It evades the protection from some
(08:21):
of the monoclonal antibodies, and it diminishes somewhat the capability
and the effectiveness of the vaccine to block it. It
doesn't eliminate it, but it diminishes it by multiple folds.
Joining us now is Andrew Joseph, reporter at STAT News.
Thanks for joining us. Andrew, thanks so much. One of
the things we had been concerned about for some time
(08:41):
now is the rise of these new coronavirus variants and
the vaccines effectiveness against them. We've been hearing that they
might be more transmissible, and with the South African variant,
we heard that it could reduce the efficacy of the vaccines. Well,
now we're getting a little bit of data to support that.
Fiser is saying that their vaccine loses some potency against
(09:04):
this South African variant. Specifically, they didn't do like clinical trials,
these were lab experiments, but Andrew tell us a little
bit more about it. So, with the rise of these
variants that appear to have some effect, whether it's on
immunity or transmissibility, the vaccine makers have been doing tests
to look at how well their vaccines stack up against
(09:25):
the different mutations and the different variants. And what fighter
Um and its partner beyond Tech reported yesterday was that,
and this is taken from blood from people who were
previously vaccinated. They basically take that blood and see how
well it stands up against the variant in in lab experiments,
and basically it showed that it showed a drop in
the blood's ability to neutralize the virus compared to other
(09:46):
forms of the coronavirus. And what that means is a
little hard to tell because this is just a lab
experiment in a way, But basically other vaccines that have
been tested against this variant called B one three one
in real world settings have also shown a decline in
an effectiveness. So there is some sense that this variant
maybe not be quite as good at a target as
other forms of the coronavirus. What about Maderna because Maderna
(10:10):
and FISER are the most closely related type of vaccines,
they're both these m RNA vaccines. So both Maderna and
FISER finished their clinical trials before this variant and some
of these other variants that people have probably heard about emerged,
so they're similarly. There's not clinical data with the Maderna vaccine.
Maderna Advisor have the to authorized vaccines in the US,
(10:30):
and they finished their clinical trials before this variant and
other variants that people have probably heard about sort of emerged,
so there aren't clinical data with them. But Maderna last
month reported something similar as Viser did yesterday and that
in lab experiments the blood taken from people who had
received the Maderna vaccine didn't neutralize this variant, the B
one three one variant, as well as other forms of
(10:51):
the coronavirus. What exactly that means is again hard to
hire to know for sure, but again it just sort
of adds to the evidence that this variant has some
sort of escape from the vaccines. What we're seeing next
is and we heard about this already that some of
these vaccine makers are working on booster shots to target
the variant. You know, at least with the case of
fiser maderna, they can tweak the entire vaccine to make
(11:15):
it stand up hopefully to this and other variants as well.
So these are kind of the next steps and tweaking
the way the vaccine works itself. Different companies are sort
of looking at what the next generation covid vaccines might be.
They might be more designed off of this specific variant,
or they might sort of be designed to target multiple
strains of the coronavirus. So that is ongoing, and you
(11:37):
know that's that's a process that's done with other vaccines.
It's not a perfect comparison, but every year the flu
shot is sort of reformulated based on the strains they
think are going to be circulating in a given season.
So there is some know how to do this. They'll
have to work with regulators as well. I mean, I
guess the thought process isn't that they will go through
full on clinical trials all over again. I mean, it's
(12:00):
already approved. These are just tweaks, so they might be
able to push them through faster too, right, right, exactly,
and so regulators like the FDA are they've publicly said
they're trying to figure out what they might require from
sort of updated vaccines, but again, this is something that
they have some experience with and might apply something similar
like to their flu protocol. All that being said, obviously
(12:21):
we should all still be getting the current vaccines in
whatever form they're in. That's why they're working on these
booster shots. And it's not like it doesn't provide no
protection at all. It's just that it might slip through
a little bit more. But that's still very important that
we should still be getting the vaccines in their current
form exactly. I think, first of all, in the US,
this variant B one three one, it's in the US,
(12:42):
but it's for now that could change, appears to be
circulating at pretty low levels. The other thing is that
even in the with the vaccines that have clinical data
like from Johnson and Johnson that shows the vaccine loses
some of its effectiveness against this variant, it's not like
an all or nothing thing. It will likely provide a
good amount of protection, maybe not the same amount of
protection as if you were exposed to a different variant.
(13:04):
And what that means is like maybe it still prevents
you from getting really sick or from dying, but you
might just be more likely to have like a sort
of a symptomatic case of COVID. So there's like some
gray areas and nuance here. It's not like vaccines don't
either work or they don't work. It's also a matter
of like what they're blocking, whether it's mild disease versus
severe disease, and sort of the rate at which they
do that. And the South African variant is the more
(13:26):
concerning one right now, but you're right, it's it's not
as prevalent as the UK variant. The CDC said, I
think by the end of March that that one could
be the dominant strain here in the United States. Have
we seen any of the similar type of research when
it comes to the effectiveness of the vaccines on that string,
the UK string, that variant it's called B one one seven.
It is spreading pretty well in the US and as
(13:47):
you said, will likely become dominant late next month into April.
So far, it seems that if there is any effect
on vaccine effectiveness, it's minor at that but the data
are pretty limited. But so far doesn't seem to be
sort of have the same escape potential that the B
one three one variant does. Andrew Joseph, reporter at STAT News,
(14:08):
thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much.
There are some mutations at the very tip of the
spike that helped them to grab onto cells like it's
they're almost like they're stickier. This mutation that is in
(14:28):
the seven lineages is somewhere else. It's down near the
base of the spy. Joining us now is Carl Zimmer,
columnists at the New York Times. Thanks for joining us, Carl,
Thanks for having me. We've been seeing a lot of
good news bad news with the coronavirus. We're seeing infection
rates drop, hospitalizations go down, all great news. But the
big concern has always been these variants that have been
(14:49):
popping up right now, specifically the ones out of the
UK and South Africa. But a new study said that
we have about seven different virus variants that are found
here in the United States. They all carry the same mutation.
Karl tell us what we're seeing here in the US.
What we're seeing is this virus basically probing our biology
(15:10):
and evolving new ways to take advantage of it. So
there are new mutations that are popping up and scientists
are just desperately trying to figure out which ones are
making them more of a threat to us. So this
latest development is particularly striking because you have several different
lineages in the United States, all of which have gained
the same mutation of the exact same spot in the
(15:32):
exact same gene, and they're all growing. They're still pretty rare,
but they're all steadily seemed to be growing, and so
that suggests that maybe this mutation is making them more contagious.
That's been the concern obviously with the two other big
variants we're hearing about from the UK and South Africa.
And these mutations always end up having to do something
with that spike protein, the way the virus latches onto
(15:55):
us and then starts replicating in our body. So where
are we seeing these variants in the United States, and
then how we're how is this mutation working with them?
At this point, these seven variants are sprinkled across the country.
There's some indication that maybe a couple of them started
in the South Stormware South or Southwest, but it's really
(16:16):
hard to tell because we just don't do enough surveillance
of variance yet. We're really behind the ball with that.
But as you say, a lot of the key mutations
that we're seeing involved this protein that sticks off the
surface of the virus called spike. Now there are some
mutations at the very tip of the spike that helped
them to grab onto cells like it's they're almost like
(16:38):
they're stickier. This mutation that is in the seven lineages
is somewhere else. It's down near the base of the spike,
but that might have something to do with what happens
after the virus sticks to a sell. What happens then
is that it has these basically these sort of harpoons
that shoot out from the base of the spike and
latch onto the cell and pull the cell and the
(17:01):
virus together so they confuse. And it looks like this
mutation conceivably might make it easier for those harpoons to deploy.
You made mention of surveillance and how much surveillance we
do here in the United States. I mean, a lot
of this really calls for just so much more of that.
How the virus is changing within our own population here
(17:23):
and we're just not doing enough of that we need
better coordination between state local officials and across the country.
You made note in your article about how these variants
were kind of discovered. One doctor uploaded this to an
online database. Then he got contacted from a doctor in
another state and they were comparing and contrasting and say, oh,
these variants have the same mutation. So that's how they're coordinating.
(17:46):
That's how they're finding out that there's all this commonality.
They're kind of working semi independently, and they are working
on really shoestring budgets and they're only often in many states,
they're getting a tiny free actually one percent of all
of the positive corona virus tests, so they're missing a lot.
But you know, every now and then they're catching these
(18:07):
things and noticing a pattern, and we need to be
just doing that and doing it a lot more, and
scientists say, just get ready for more. This expect that
new mutations, new variants are gonna be popping up, you know,
as we've seen some obviously will be more successful than others,
as we've seen with the UK variants. I think the
CDC said that by the end of March or so,
(18:28):
that that could be the dominant strain here in the
United States. So it's not that these multiple variants might
become the dominant one. But the virus is always mutating.
We've been here before. This is what influenza does in
its own particular way. And the CDC and other government
organizations are very well set up to keep track of
how influenza mutates and shifts, and then they respond very
(18:52):
quickly with new kinds of public health measures for vaccines
or to be on guard for outbreaks. So we just
need to be doing that for coronavirus. As you mentioned,
these are just kind of sprinkled across the US right now.
There's no indication that one of these seven variants are
going to start picking up or anything. We don't know
enough about them yet. We don't even know their biology
very well. So scientists are now doing experiments with viruses
(19:15):
that carry these particular mutations just to try to figure
out what does this really matter. There's so many basic
questions about this virus. We just don't have answers to
Carl Zimmer Calumnus at The New York Times, thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you. That's it for today.
(19:37):
Join us on social media at Daily Dive pod on
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in Allow a sudden I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever
you get your podcast. This episode of The David Divers
produced by Dick Right and engineered by Tony Sarrentina. I'm
Astar premiers and this was your daily dive, Bud Fack
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