What Does A New COVID Strain Mean? - 12/21/2020

On this episode of Quick News Daily, I go on a very deep dive into the possibility of this new strain of COVID in the UK, what it could mean for the vaccines, and how it's different from the regular coronavirus. Also, I talk about the stimulus deal and the approval and rollout of the Moderna COVID vaccine. 

Make sure to check out my new article: https://teespring.com/loser- in-chief 

And check out the new merchandise: https://medium.com/quick-news-daily-podcast/trumps-covid-response-reagan-hiv-aids-8cd2e265aadc  

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Find Quick News Daily on your favorite podcast player: https://rebrand.ly/QuickNews

Sources:

Hill leaders reach $900 billion Covid relief deal in breakthrough following partisan disputes 
Several countries ban travel to the U.K. due to new coronavirus strain 
US asked to prioritize frontline essential workers as distribution of Moderna shots begins 
FDA authorizes a second vaccine as average daily cases and deaths hit records 

(Mostly Accurate) Transcript:

OPEN

Today is Monday, December 21st, and we are just 4 days away from Christmas, if you celebrate that sort of thing. Personally, I celebrate the commercial version of Christmas, which is pretty much just the food and gifts, not the religious part on my end. But Christmas, or whatever, might come early for you because I finally designed that new merchandise! I also wrote another article that’s available on Medium, so stick around to the end and I’ll have more info on those items. Otherwise, it seems to have been a relatively normal weekend (at least normal for 2020). Let’s get caught up with the stimulus news, COVID news, and more! 

STIMULUS

Well, much later than pretty much everybody thought, Congress has apparently reached a new deal on a COVID relief stimulus package. They’re trying to brand this as relief for small businesses, unemployed Americans and health care workers, as well as more help distributing the COVID vaccine. 

The actual text of the bill wasn’t available yet at the time of this recording, but Democratic House and Senate members released what help was going to be in the deal eventually. So, here’s what we know so far: 

The deal is worth $900B total, which was way less than the 3 trillion that Democrats were trying to push for. 
Direct payment checks will be sent out again, which will be about $600 for each child and adult. 
There is $284B for forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program and $15B for “live venues, independent movie theaters, and cultural institutions”. 
In addition to the usual unemployment benefit, if you qualify for that, you’ll get an extra $300 per week over what is usually available. 
$25B for rental assistance and to extend the moratorium on evictions. 
$82B for schools and colleges, mostly to help them reopen safely. 
$7B to increase broadband access, which will help those in rural areas. That has to be tough when everyone is doing virtual work and you barely get reception. 
Lastly, there’s a tax credit “to support employers offering paid sick leave”, because of course there is. Apparently, there’s nothing more American than giving companies free money for doing the right thing (coming from the same people who will rant for 20 minutes about “kids these days and their participation trophies”). 

The bill itself hasn’t passed yet. There are still a lot of procedures that need to happen, but Trump’s reaction on Twitter could speed things up or slow them down dramatically. I’ll make sure to keep you updated. 

COVID

So, we are slowly learning more about the possible new strain of COVID that’s spreading through the UK at the moment. One early number that’s being thrown around by experts is that this new strain could be up to 70% more transmissible than regular COVID. They’re also saying that this could explain why London and Southern England are seeing such a crazy amount of spread. However, these experts are also saying that even if this is the case, there is still no evidence that the new strain is deadlier or that the vaccine wouldn’t work with it, which is good news.  

With that being said, some European countries have started travel bans to Britain. At least six countries have banned air travel to Britain, and France and Belgium have banned traveling there by train. France’s ban is for 48 hours, and it’s to buy them time to find a “common doctrine” to stop the spread of the new form of the virus, although I’m not necessarily sure how helpful a 2 day ban is when you’re studying a new virus, but I’m obviously no scientist. There was a special crisis meeting for the European Council today, so I’m sure we’ll be getting more details about that later today. 

But, to play Debbie Downer for a second, I think it was Sherlock Holmes (or some other old-timey person or character) who said that “an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. That means that just because there’s no proof yet doesn’t mean that there will never be any proof. For example, Einstein was decades ahead of his time with his Theory of Relativity; he had to wait like 10-15 years for the technology to catch up since the tech he needed wasn’t available yet. So, like the saying goes, there was no evidence, but that didn’t mean that the evidence wasn’t out there. We should keep an open mind and prepare ourselves for the possibility that it is more deadly or that it may react differently with the vaccine. 

Let’s back up just a bit and get technical for a minute here to take a deep dive on this new variant and what that actually means. 

This strain was detected back in September, and it grew so that by November, it made up a quarter of the cases in London. By the middle of December, this increased again, meaning the new strain was responsible for ⅔ of the cases. 

The experts are saying that there are 3 important things about the virus: 

It’s rapidly replacing the other version of the virus, so it’s becoming the virus
It’s unusually highly mutated, and the mutations are probably affecting an important part of the virus (probably the spike protein that I mentioned). 
When it’s been studied in the lab, it has shown that they can increase the virus’ ability to infect other cells. 

As for why it’s so extremely mutated, the current best guess is that it came from a patient with a weakened immune system who was unable to beat the virus. I guess that makes sense because the person’s immune system would have tried to fight it a bit, and the virus would know how to beat those attacks the next time. It’s like you’re racing someone and they get a 10 yard head start. The only question I have is how that virus would spread to someone else then? Probably the nurses and/or doctors who took care of them, I would imagine. I know we have some real deal science listeners, so they can feel free to reach out and explain it to me.

And here’s an article I just found this morning, and it interviews even more doctors from around the world. Their thinking is that the vaccine will still protect against the new strain. If you watch MSNBC, you might recognize the name Dr. Vin Gupta, who’s a really smart guy. He said “I do think that this might impact our future facing work, but it’s not going to impact the near term. It will not impact the current vaccines’ effectiveness in ending the pandemic. The effectiveness of these vaccines in producing antibodies that can really attack and kill Covid-19 is extraordinary.”

Joe Biden’s pick to become Surgeon General said something similar yesterday, and he added that hand washing, social distancing, and masks will still be precautions against this new strain. 

One professor of immunology from London said he’s more concerned since this was a significant mutation (there were actually 17 mutations in this one), but he also added that the vaccine helps your body produce a ton of different antibodies, so the new strain should still be caught by one of those. Another researcher from Cardiff University said “It’s quite likely, given that the vaccine provides immunity to different regions of the spike protein, not just the one where the mutations are, it is quite likely that the vaccine will work against this thing.” 

Essentially, we just have to stay cautious about this. Honestly, it sounds too early to tell what this actually means for the vaccine, but I would say it probably still covers it. A while ago, I talked about how these COVID vaccines have insanely high efficacy rates compared to other vaccines, and it might be like one of four “super vaccines” where it actually teams up with your body to produce a response that’s superhuman; it’s way more than your body could do on it’s own. 

Either way, let’s keep our eyes and ears open for any new updates. 

MODERNA

Some good news for everyone is that on Friday night, the Moderna vaccine got the final approval it needed from the FDA (this time, the vote was unanimous; 20-0). Then, on Sunday, the CDC approved it as well, meaning that it’s already shipping out to the various states. 

The CDC panel that recommends who should get the vaccine voted that frontline essential workers and people 75 and older should get the next priority for the vaccine, and after that, it should expand to more frontline essential workers, so this includes about 30 million first responders, teachers, food and agriculture, manufacturing, postal service, public transit, and grocery store workers.

Between Pfizer and Moderna, about 7.9 million shots are going to be delivered to states this week. Already, 2.84 million doses have been delivered, and half a million shots have been given. The one Yahoo article I used in this story kept saying that the Moderna vaccine will “significantly” increase the availability of COVID vaccines; they kept using that word “significantly”, so that’s a good sign. It will be more helpful for rural areas because, again, it doesn’t need to be kept as cold as the Pfizer one. 

I’m going to be honest here for a second, and maybe this is just me being petty and vengeful, but it doesn’t sit right with me that people who talked about how COVID wasn’t that bad, and people who were just flat out reckless, are some of the first ones in line for the vaccine. I know it’d be discrimination to not give it to them, but just on a moral level, it feels like they’re someone who was on the Titanic and shouting “that wasn’t an iceberg you snowflake, everything’s fine!”, and then a little bit later, they’re shoving you out of the way and taking your seat on a lifeboat. Maybe it’s just the narcissism sneaking out, but it’s kind of like all the Trump people getting vaccinated. It just doesn’t make sense that there are no consequences for these people’s actions. 

I do want to end this on a more positive note though and give a special shout out to the Dean of Morehouse Medical School, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice. Dr. Rice is a Black physician, and she wanted to be an example for minority communities and others who are still skeptical of the vaccine, so she got vaccinated on Friday. I think it was last week that I mentioned Barack Obama talking about how these minority communities are getting hit the hardest by the virus, but that they’re also the most concerned about its safety, so this is really an important example being set by Dr. Rice. She even went so far as to say “Really, this is a life and death message for Black people about the coronavirus”. 

END

Alright everybody, I think that’s all for today. I still haven’t made up my mind about shows for the rest of the week, so at this point, I guess I’d just say to assume that there won’t be any more. That way, it can be a fun little surprise when one pops up. But I am working on doing my first review show in months, and for any superhero fans out there, I’m deciding to revisit Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I figured that would be a good one since, pretty soon, it’ll be 2021 and Zack Snyder’s version of the Justice League will be on HBO Max. Plus, I really just love that movie and wanted to have a discussion about it. As for what’s out right now, I did finally make a new design for merchandise, so that’s on a T-shirt and long sleeve shirts. The link is in the description, and I thought it was kind of a fun design that makes fun of Trump. Also, I wrote an article in Medium that compares Trump’s response to COVID to Reagan’s response to AIDS, so if you don’t like either of those people, check that out; that link is also in the description. If you don’t want to worry about running out of free articles on Medium every month, you can become a contributor to Quick News Daily for $3 a month, and then I send you the free “friends and family” link. In fact, I sent it out to our awesome contributors yesterday, and it’s time to thank them as well. Thank you to our Producer, Kathy, and our Executive Producer, Gwen.