Consider This from NPR - Mask Debate Heats Up; Creating A Vaccine For A Mutating Virus

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Just two months ago, the Northeast was the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. On Wednesday, there were just 581 new reported cases of the coronavirus in New York and now visitors from other states are expected to quarantine after they arrive. More Governors across the country are touting the benefits of masks but not all are willing to make wearing them a state policy. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports that scientists are closely tracking mutations in the coronavirus to ensure the changes don't complicate a future vaccine. Plus, COVID-19 has presented particular challenges for women and reproductive health. Many say that the pandemic is causing them to rethink their plans to have children. Sign up for 'The New Normal' newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, just one thing real quick before we get started. On Monday, this show is going to have a new name. It's going to be called Consider This. And we are going to bring you stories that aren't just about the virus, because we know that people are consuming news about other stuff too. That said, this pandemic is clearly not over. We are still going to cover it right here on this show. Email us with your thoughts at coronavirusdaily at npr.org. Okay, here's the show. The true number of cases in the United States might be 10 times the current number, not the 2.4 million that have already been recorded, but something like more than 20 million asymptomatic cases that have already been recorded, but something like more than 20 million asymptomatic cases that have not been recorded. So says new CDC reporting. On Wednesday, there were just around

580 new documented cases of the coronavirus in New York state. In other states like Arizona, Florida and Texas, there were thousands of new cases. So we're announcing today a joint travel advisory. So New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and governors from New Jersey and Connecticut got together virtually to make a big announcement. People coming in from states that have a high infection rate must quarantine for 14 days. A lot of people come into this region and they could literally bring the infection with them. It wouldn't be malicious or malevolent, but it would still be real. Cuomo said the governors will be watching infection rates in other states. And if any state goes above a certain threshold, people from that state will be required to quarantine.

And people who don't follow the rules could face big fines. Right now, nine states are on that list. Just two months ago, it was the Northeast that was the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. And it was Florida that was restricting visitors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Coming up, what mutations in the coronavirus could mean for a vaccine. This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It is Thursday, June 25th. At this point, we know masks work. They just do. But wearing them has become political.

And it starts with President Trump. He has told his aides that wearing a mask would, quote, send the wrong signal, according to media reports. And he does not wear one in public. This conflict between science and politics is starting to put some Republican governors in an interesting position, especially in states where cases are rising sharply. First, we want to make sure that everyone reinforces the best safe practices of wearing a mask, hand sanitization. That's Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, where cases are surging. He and other conservative politicians are now encouraging people to wear masks.

And they are wearing masks, too, even if they're not requiring other people to wear them. More than a dozen states have clear mask policies. Most of them are led by Democrats. Republican governors are trying to find ways to encourage but not require masks. At a press conference, Idaho Governor Brad Little admitted he was wrong about masks. I'll plead guilty. I was one of those people when I traveled and went through an airport and people were wearing masks. I thought, well, there's a paranoid soul.

And this coronavirus is different. So wearing a mask is just the right thing to do. In Ohio, Republican Governor Mike DeWine at first issued a mandate that in order to reopen businesses, everyone would need to wear a mask. But then... It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far, that people were not going to accept the government telling them what to do. So he changed the mandate so it only applied to employees, not customers. In Utah, where cases have recently gone way up, Republican Governor Gary Herbert has shared photos of himself wearing a mask.

He's using the hashtag mask up. And on Wednesday, he started requiring masks in state buildings. So where we have control over it with our own facilities, we're going to require people to have masks when they come and do business. But still, people will not be required by the government to wear masks statewide. Yesterday, I was pleased to see that the Utah Hospital Association launched their Mask Up Utah campaign. Of course, many agree a hashtag is probably not enough. What happens next likely depends on whether people decide to wear masks on their own and, of course, what the case numbers look like in their states.

As scientists work to develop an effective vaccine by the end of the year, they're watching the coronavirus for changes. As they like to say, mutations. Because the virus could change in a way that lets it evade a vaccine. NPR's John Hamilton reports on how researchers are doing this. The best way to spot mutations or genetic changes in a virus is by comparing all the genes in different samples. Peter Thelen of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory says back in January, scientists had only one whole genome sequence to study. Today, we have over 47,000 coronavirus genomes that have been submitted to international databases. New genomes are added every day from all over the world. And Thielen says each time a new one arrives,

it gets a close examination. What we're looking for in the data is similarity between the virus that first emerged and the genome that had been deposited and any changes that have occurred in the virus. Overall, he says, the viruses circulating today look remarkably similar to the ones that appeared in China late last year. SARS-CoV-2 simply isn't mutating very quickly. Thielen says that's partly because when the virus generates copies of itself, it uses a sort of proofreading system to catch any errors in the genetic code. So if there's a change, it will actually make a correction at a specific location. Preventing a mutation. Vaccine developers are especially concerned about locations that affect something called the spike protein. It's a structure on the surface of the coronavirus that allows it to invade cells. And the goal of current vaccines is to teach the immune system to recognize this spike protein and repel the virus. Thielen says so far, that's

looking like a good strategy. The targets for diagnostics and the targets for vaccine design still today remain the same as we would have designed them in January. Some other viruses have proved less amenable. Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, says the influenza virus is constantly altering its surface proteins. Flu just really loves to change these parts. It even swaps them around kind of within the flu family. And that's why we can end

up with such different flus from season to season. Flus that can dodge the previous year's vaccine. Hodgcroft says measles represents the other extreme. Children today get a measles vaccine that was developed in the 1960s and protects for a lifetime. She says SARS-CoV-2 is likely to fall somewhere between the flu and measles when it comes to developing a vaccine. I think in the short term, we'll find something. I think the big question is whether this is something we'll be able to vaccinate once and then you never have to get it again, or will it be something you have to get every couple of years

to keep your immunity up to date? Hodcroft says scientists are unsure because the coronavirus is so new. We haven't really seen the full diversity of how the virus can mutate because it gathers mutations over time. We can't speed up time, so we just have to wait and see how it's mutating. Even if the coronavirus doesn't change much, it's not clear how long the immune system will remember what it's learned from a vaccine. But Hodcroft says at the moment, vaccine developers have more pressing concerns.

It's not a small feat to manufacture a vaccine for billions of people But Hodcroft says at the moment, vaccine developers have more pressing concerns. It's not a small feat to manufacture a vaccine for billions of people and then to get it to all of those people. And I think we have to keep in mind that even that is going to take months. In addition to the months required to develop a safe and effective vaccine in the first place. That was NPR's John Hamilton. Far fewer women want to get pregnant right now because of the pandemic. That's according to a new survey from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that advocates for reproductive rights. But at the same time, while fewer women want to have children, many are having a hard time getting access to birth control, especially women of color. NPR's Sarah McCammon talked about this with the survey's lead researcher, Laura Lindberg.

COVID-19 pandemic has really compounded existing racial inequities in reproductive care. Black and Hispanic women were more likely to face delays or were unable to get contraception or other care than were white women. This is what health care inequities look like in action. And the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted these existing racial disparities that you describe. Is this is what we're seeing in terms of access to contraception? Is it different or worse than before the pandemic? Yes, I is it different or worse than before the pandemic? Yes, I think it's certainly worse than before the pandemic. A couple of things are going on. So one is cost.

If you've lost your job right now, you may have lost your health insurance, and that limits the kind of providers you can go to or access. Transportation, childcare, physically leaving your home are all more difficult right now. That's for individuals. For the health care provider side, we know that clinics and pharmacies and health care providers have been closed or haven't been providing as much care because of COVID-19. It's harder to get contraceptive care right now than ever before. What is the upshot of

this? Fewer children in the next year? We heard about the possibility of a baby boom from the pandemic. Can you make any predictions based on what you're seeing in the data? Usually I'm not willing to do a crystal ball prediction, but in this case, I think it's pretty clear we're going to have a baby bust, not a baby boom. Women are clearly expressing a desire to delay childbearing right now. And although we're only in the first few months of this pandemic, as more time passes, I think the fuller effects are still going to unfold, and that's going to be a decline in fertility. So a decline in fertility despite the difficulty getting access to contraception?

Overall, there'll be a decline in fertility, but we need to be concerned about individual women who can't get the contraception they need to achieve their own fertility goals. Researcher Laura Lindberg talking to NPR's Sarah McCammon. We had production help for this episode from Boise State Public Radio's Lacey Daly and editing help from Joe Neal. Thanks to both of you. For more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date with all the news on your local public radio station. If you own an Amazon Echo device, tell it to Play News from NPR. You'll hear the latest international, national and local news. That's Play News from NPR.

I'm Kelly McEvers. Thank you for listening. We will be back with more tomorrow. Actress Tracee Ellis Ross is used to people talking about her age a lot, and she's okay with whatever people say. I'm 47 years old, and I'm the most comfortable in my skin I've ever been. When we go back to being 22, no thank you. The Black-ish Star on Confronting an Ageist World. Listen and subscribe to It's Been a Minute from NPR.