Shooting Their Shot
February 25, 2021
The Good News
- Lawyers have found parents of 105 separated migrant kids in past month (NBC)
- Ghana 1st nation to receive coronavirus vaccines from COVAX (AP)
“If there was an epidemic, that definitely would make people accept vaccines. I wouldn’t hope for that, of course, but if you wanted people to love vaccines, an epidemic would remind them how magical they are.” — Bill Gates
“150 people die every year from being hit by falling coconuts. Not to worry, drug makers are developing a vaccine.” — Jim Carrey
With An Approved Vaccine, J&J Ready To Shoot Their Shot
(Artur Widak via Getty Images)
There’s no disagreement that the atypically swift development of multiple vaccines to combat Covid-19 has been an incredible scientific achievement. Beyond that, trying to make sense of what all the data from all the clinical trials really means — especially about when we can begin to feel “normal” again — is enough to send people to psychics.
Efficacy assessments of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are quite positive, and increasing inoculation numbers are being credited with declining new infection rates. But both vaccines have complicated storage and handling procedures, and require two shots spaced weeks apart. We are now on the verge of having a third vaccine from Johnson & Johnson — a one-dose version that is far easier to store, and expected to streamline the logistics of a complicated mass vaccination campaign.
However — and this is where the confusion comes in — while a Food and Drug Administration review of the J&J vaccine released Wednesday found it was safe and 100% effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths in a large clinical trial, a breakdown of the data shows a more puzzling picture.
The vaccine was 85% effective at preventing severe illness, but only 66% protective overall when moderate cases were included. The efficacy rate dropped to 42% in preventing moderate to severe illness in a subgroup of high-risk adults over age 60, particularly those with diabetes. One biostatistician said that at this point, the lower efficacy wasn’t a cause of huge concern, but that it warranted more study.
The J&J results also highlight the challenge variants pose to all of the vaccines. The large, international trial found J&J’s vaccine was 72% effective at preventing cases of moderate to severe Covid-19 in the US, where concerning variants have only recently begun to be detected. But in South Africa, where a difficult variant became dominant late last year, it was only 64% effective against moderate to severe illness.
That drop-off is still smaller than for some other vaccines, like the one developed by Novavax, which was nearly 90% effective in a British trial, but fell to 50% efficacy in South Africa. The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford fared even worse. It was estimated to be 76% effective in preventing symptomatic infections in trials before variants emerged, but was suspended in South Africa after a small study suggested it provided no protection against the variant there.
Medical experts agree about something else: people the world over need to be immunized as quickly as possible to end the pandemic and prevent the emergence of future new variants. So regardless of which vaccine shows up at a distribution site near you, don’t dissect it — just get the shot(s). (WaPo, $)
Germany Is Taking Human Rights Abuses Syria-sly
(Thomas Lohnes via Getty Images)
- A German court has convicted a former Syrian secret police officer of crimes against humanity in a case hailed by rights groups as a landmark. On Wednesday, Eyad al-Gharib was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for arresting and transporting protesters to an interrogation center known for torture in the early days of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
- Al-Gharib is the first former Syrian official to be found guilty of human rights violations in the country’s now decade-long civil war. Justice was sought in Europe after Syrian courts and the International Criminal Court failed to act. European courts have been willing to step up and try foreigners in their countries for grave crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
- Al-Gharib entered Germany in April 2018 and was arrested along with a more senior Syrian intelligence officer, Anwar Raslan, in February 2019. Raslan is being tried separately. Al-Assad, who remains in power, has waged a campaign of violence and torture with Russia’s assistance to quell any uprising against him. Meanwhile, Syria is scarred by destruction, poverty, and hunger, and continues sinking into a profound economic crisis. (NYT, $)
Human Rights Commissioner Warns Of Human Wrongs
- Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights and civil rights groups, issued a stark warning Wednesday to the human rights council that Sri Lanka was on the verge of quickly returning to violence and human rights abuses unless decisive international action is taken.
- Bachelet said the Sri Lankan government has “closed the door” on ending impunity for past atrocities committed during the brutal 26-year civil war that ended in 2009, and is facing a return to state repression of civil society and militarization of public institutions.
- Former army officer and current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has appointed at least 28 serving or former military and intelligence personnel to key posts since 2020. Some, including the army chief and the secretary of defense, are senior officials implicated in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the final years of the civil war.
- Sri Lanka’s previous government had taken some steps toward accountability and war crimes tribunals, but this ended after Rajapaksa was elected in 2019. (Guardian)
Additional World News
- Looking for Something New in Russia’s ‘New People’ Party (NYT, $)
- How tweets that praised terrorist groups and mocked royals led to a Spanish rapper’s arrest (WaPo, $). Still waiting on the trial, he’s hoping to beat the rap.
- Meatless school menu sparks political row in France (Guardian). You know things are backward when cutting out filet mignon and escargot is “elitist.”
- China targets Uighurs with more prosecutions, prison terms (Al Jazeera)
- How Britain stole $45 trillion from India (Al Jazeera)
- Deaths Fell in Japan Last Year. How? (NYT, $). Maybe we’d all live longer if we never left our rooms.
- Nepal’s Supreme Court Rules Dissolved Parliament Must Be Reinstated (NYT, $)
Covid-19
- Concierge Care Provider One Medical Gave COVID-19 Vaccine To Ineligible People (NPR)
- India’s vaccination campaign is unlike any other (Vox)
- What is COVAX? All you need to know in 500 words (Al Jazeera)
- We know you like your world in a nutshell, but how about your greens on your windowsill? Our friends at Hamama are making it easy to grow nutritious microgreens from your home.
- Veggies like kale, cabbage, and broccoli are super nutritious and flavorful at just 7-10 days old. Plus, growing them from home is (seriously) easy with Hamama’s patent-pending Seed Quilts. Just add water once and harvest your own microgreens in a week, it’s practically fail-proof.
- Eating just a handful of microgreens can add quite a punch of delicious nutrition to every meal! Start eating more greens today!
If The President Told You To Jump Off A Cliff, Would You?
- The increasingly popular “President Trump made me do it” defense isn’t winning hearts and minds on the federal bench. At a bail hearing Tuesday for a Proud Boy from Kansas accused of storming the Capitol, Chief US District Court Judge Beryl Howell said she was skeptical about the legal merit of the effort to shift blame toward the former President and his inflammatory rhetoric about the election.
- William Chrestman, 47, faces a series of felony charges, including conspiracy to interfere with police during civil disorder, threatening police while carrying a dangerous weapon, and obstructing an official proceeding. In a brief filed last week, Chrestman’s lawyers pointed to several Supreme Court cases they said indicated that guidance from government officials can sometimes be a defense against criminal charges.
- They also cited Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement following Trump’s impeachment trial that those who besieged the Capitol “believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.” Howell called the defense argument “quite interesting,” but seemed to come down on the side of individual responsibility for following the law. Chrestman had been released to home detention last week by a federal magistrate in Kansas, but on Sunday Howell stayed that order while she considers the issue. (Politico)
Killing The Moratorium
- A Texas federal judge dealt another blow to President Biden’s immigration agenda when he blocked Biden’s 100-day moratorium on most deportations in a late-night ruling on Tuesday. US District Judge Drew Tipton granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s motion for an injunction against the moratorium Biden signed on his first day in office.
- Last month Tipton temporarily stopped the policy from being enforced in Texas. In his 105-page ruling just issued, Tipton said: “This preliminary injunction is granted on a nationwide basis and prohibits enforcement and implementation of the [100-day pause] in every place Defendants have jurisdiction to enforce and implement the January 20 Memorandum.”
- Tipton is a former Marine and Republican member of the Federalist Society. He practiced as an employment law defense attorney in Houston before being nominated for the lifetime federal job by President Trump in 2020. (Politico)
Additional USA News
- Dems clash over Biden-era police bill after ‘defund’ attacks (Politico)
- Biden squeezed between promises to go green and bolster unions (Politico)
- What Is The Equality Act? Anti-Discrimination Law Explained (NPR). Hint: it’s in the name.
- Not All COVID-19 Aid Is Spent. But Schools, Cities And States Say They Need More (NPR)
- DeJoy Faces Lawmakers’ Questions About Post Office Delays (NPR). With all these questions, he’s probably DeMad, or at least DeFrustrated.
- For Black Families, Evictions Are Still At A Crisis Point — Despite Moratorium (NPR)
- One of the death penalty’s former strongholds will abolish it (Vox)
- How Texas’s deregulated market for power led to exorbitant electric bills (CNN)
- Over 160 Confederate Symbols Were Removed in 2020, Group Says (NYT, $). The more that get removed, the more people wonder why so many were left.
We’ve Long Been Living In A Doggy Dog World
- DNA analysis of a fingernail-size fragment of bone, found in a tunnel-like cave on Alaska’s west coast in 1998, revealed the tiny fragment once belonged to the first known dog in the Americas. That supports the conclusion that dogs accompanied the first humans who set foot on these continents and that both traveled there along the Pacific coast — thousands of years earlier than believed. The findings were reported Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
- Researchers once thought humans initially entered the Americas about 12,000 years ago, when thick glaciers covering much of North America began to melt. That opened a corridor allowing hunters of mammoth and other big game to trek from Siberia across now-submerged land in the Bering Sea, and then into North America.
- In the past decade, archaeologists have shown that people might have begun moving into North America much earlier — maybe 16,000 years ago — traveling from Siberia through the Alaskan archipelago and eventually making their way down the Pacific coast.
- The sliver of dog bone supports this hypothesis. It was recovered along with more than 50,000 prehistoric animal and human remains excavated near Wrangel Island, but researchers didn’t realize it came from a dog until they analyzed its DNA. The bone is about 10,200 years old, making its owner the oldest dog known in the Americas. Previous record holders were two 10,000-year-old dogs unearthed in America’s Midwest.
- The bone sliver’s genome is closely related to the first known dogs thought to have been domesticated in Siberia some 23,000 years ago. Estimates are that the Alaskan dog split genetically from its Siberian ancestors about 16,700 years ago, meaning dogs and their humans likely left Siberia and entered the Americas thousands of years before North America’s glaciers melted. The dates also line up with DNA-based estimates for when modern Native Americans split off from their Siberian ancestors. (Science Magazine)
Additional Reads
- Farms In The Midwest Have Lost Much Of Their Most Fertile Soil (NPR)
- Hot houses: the race to save bats from overheating as temperatures rise (Guardian)
- Magnets: The Hidden Objects Powering Your Life (NPR). Wise men once said: “Water, fire, air, dirt. F***ing magnets, how do they work?”
- Google finally reveals the terrifying amount of data Gmail collects on iPhone (BGR)
- The boxing film that was banned around the world (Vox). They pulled their movie, not their punches.
- India ‘cow science’ exam put off amid ‘controversy over syllabus’ (Al Jazeera)
- Biden rushes to address global computer chip shortage via latest executive order (Reuters)