Science Vs - Coronavirus: How Scary Are the Variants?

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

UPDATE 4/13/21: Since this episode published, there has been some evidence linking the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to rare blood clots. As of April 13, there were six cases in the U.S. out of more than 6.8 million doses, and one person had died. The CDC and FDA have recommended pausing the vaccine while they learn more. Details are here: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0413-JJ-vaccine.html  Just as coronavirus vaccinations are ramping up, a bunch of new variants are here, threatening to muck everything up. So we’re wondering — will these jabs still work, or is this the pandemic that never ends? To find out, we talk to Dr. Ben Reis, biochemist Prof. Pei-Yong Shi, virologist Prof. Ann Sheehy, and infectious disease expert Dr. Katy Stephenson. Check out the transcript here: https://bit.ly/3mbc0hQ This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Nick DelRose and Meryl Horn, with help from Michelle Dang and Taylor White. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell, editing help from Caitlin Kenney. Fact checking by Taylor White. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Peter Leonard, Marcus Bagala, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to the researchers we got in touch with for this episode as well as all the listeners who told us about their vaccine experience! And special thanks to the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. Today on the show, we're pinning facts against Pfizer, and Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca. Yes, more and more of us are getting our shots. And so we want to know, will these vaccines save us? Or is the virus about to outsmart us again? Hey, Science Versus. I got my first Fauci-Auchi a few weeks ago.

We asked Science Versus listeners what it was like to finally get the jab. I received the first dose of my Pfizer vaccine. My first dose of the Moderna vaccine. Johnson & Johnson, one and done. When they gave me the shot, I was like, tell me when it's done. And they were like, we already did it. And over and over again,

we heard one word to describe how people felt. Relief. Relief. Just the relief. And started crying in the waiting area. It just truly feels like we're stepping out from under this dark cloud.

I feel like I can actually breathe again. But at the same time, there was a lot of confusion. After all, cases are ticking up in the US and other parts of the world. I'm still nervous about that return to normal. Once I get full immunity, like, what is it safe to do exactly? I'm still nervous about possibly carrying the virus and giving it to someone unvaccinated. And meanwhile, we're hearing more and more about new mutations in this virus

that some are saying can make it more deadly and help it spread faster. And now people are wondering, wait a sec, if this virus is changing, are these vaccines we just got even going to work? It felt like we were turning a corner in this pandemic. But now it's like, is this the pandemic that never ends? Today on the show, we're asking, are these variants really going to muck up our vaccination plans? And also, what do we know about what you can do once you get the jab? Are you really safe?

When it comes to the vaccines, there's a lot of... Fauci-ouchy. But then there's science. Science Versus is coming up just after the break. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there.

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yourself. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan 11? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right, I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jana Levin. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor,

and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Welcome back. Today on the show, are the vaccines going to get us out of this? So around the time when the first vaccines arrived on the scene, we also started hearing rumblings out of the UK about a new variant of the coronavirus, and it was going

gangbusters. It scared the crap out of everyone because not only does it spread faster, but it also seems to be a bit more dangerous. And now this variant, it's popping up all over the place, including the US. So our first question is, can the vaccine stop this new guy, this British wanker? To find out, we're heading to a country that just a few months ago was getting hammered with this new variant. Israel. By the end of January, it had already rapidly taken over the country and 80% of all new cases were the British variant. Oh, wow. This is Dr. Ben Rees. He works at Harvard Medical School. And Ben told us that just as this UK variant was moving in, Israel wasn't just sitting on its tuchus. They'd gotten a bunch of the Pfizer vaccine

and were doing this massive rollout. Now, who got access to the vaccine in Israel? That was a bit controversial. But still, this rollout was huge. At one point, they were vaccinating 150,000 adults a day. That's in a country of 9 million people. They left the US in the dust. In fact, by population, Israel had the fastest vaccine rollout on earth. The numbers are sky high. You had literally nurses walking out into the street, hailing people, just pulling them off the street, say, come on in, I'm going to give you a vaccination. Literally like you had, you know, some hotcakes that you wanted to sell and they were going to go bad. And Ben went to Israel to do a big study on all this.

He was looking at whether Israel's huge vaccination campaign was actually working, particularly with this new variant around. So Ben and his team tracked hundreds of thousands of folks who got vaccinated and compared them with similar people, same age, same pre-existing conditions, who didn't get the jabs. All in all, there were more than a million adults in his study. And for each of them, they were checking. Did you get infected with the virus? Did you get symptoms from the virus? Did you get hospitalized as a result?

Did you unfortunately die from COVID-19? He plopped the data on the best kind of graph there is, a line graph. To see who was getting sick, he makes one line for vaccinated people and another line for the unvaccinated. And at first, the two lines pretty much look the same. What you see is that initially, in both groups, some people are getting sick,

some people are getting very sick, etc. But about two weeks after the vaccination date, you see these two curves start to diverge. Yeah, that's when you can start to see the vaccine kick in. Two to three weeks after people got their first dose, those who got the vaccine had around a 60% lower risk of getting sick with COVID compared to those who didn't get the shot. And the longer Ben waited, with data rolling in day after day, the better the evidence looked. It went from around 60 percent effective to more than 90 percent effective. That was a week after people got their second dose. It's almost like night and day. We had a very stark scientific picture, a very clear one that said,

based on hundreds of thousands of people across different ages, genders, medical backgrounds, lifestyles, you name it, there's one message. The vaccine works, it works amazingly well, and it's saving lives. So it's looking like this Pfizer shot really can keep you pretty safe from this UK strain. And we have some evidence that other vaccines are working pretty well here too, like Novavax and AstraZeneca. One study even estimates that the vaccines rolled out in the UK saved the lives of over 6,000 people there by the end of February. When it comes to AstraZeneca though, not all the headlines have

been rosy. Recently, there's been some controversy over a potential side effect from that vaccine, blood clots. So let's dive into what we know about this. Can AstraZeneca's jab really give you a dangerous blood clot? Here's what you've got to know. The German government says that out of almost 2.7 million doses of AstraZeneca that they've given, around 30 people have gotten these clots, and nine of them have died. But it's still unclear if this is just a coincidence,

so nothing to do with the vaccine, or something that we might see more of. So far, it hasn't popped up for any of the other vaccines though. And just generally, when you zoom out and look at the other side effects that we're seeing for the other shots, things are looking really, really good here. Here's Ben. There's not this, oh no, this huge side effect shows up in so many people. The vaccine is remarkably safe. The side effects that we're seeing are kind of the expected ones. You feel bad for a couple of days, you might get a fever, you might get certain inflammation, et cetera, et cetera. So that's some really good news. And in Israel, it's already changing how

people are living their lives. People who are vaccinated are allowed to go to the gym and even bars. And Ben, who got vaccinated, recently did the wildest thing. So I actually went last week was the first time I went to a restaurant. So you're getting me in the warm afterglow of the first restaurant experience in a long time. And it was a very fun, just human experience where you see other people. And the atmosphere in the restaurant was this kind of mutual feeling of everyone looking at each other, kind of smiling. Like, yeah, you're excited. I'm here. I'm excited. You're here. So it was this kind of emergent happiness that was unleashed by the coming together of people who are yearning to breathe free.

But while a lot of us dream of a world like this, where our emergent happiness can be unleashed, it's starting to feel like this dream might be slipping away. Because the UK variant, it isn't the only game in town. There are a lot of other mutants nipping at our heels. We're hearing about new ones out of Brazil and New York and a particularly infamous one that popped up in South Africa. It's more contagious than the original version and just a few months after appearing in the country,

it basically took over. So, could all these variants outfox our vaccines and send us back into quarantine? Let me just close my office door. We called up Pei Yong Shi. Okay, thanks for calling. A professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He helped create the Pfizer vaccine.

And in December, Pei Yong got a taste of his own medicine when he got the jab. He talked to Rose Rimler about it. Less than a year later, you're getting it in your own arm. Yes, that's what we worked hard for last year. Absolutely. And he thought, whew, time to take a breather. You know, we thought it's over. You know, we got the vaccine approved and we can take a break.

And then, you know, all of a sudden we heard this variant. It's really very nonstop, 24-7 busyness. That's because now Pei-Yong is in variant world. He's been looking at a bunch of them to see if they might foil the vaccine that he worked so hard on. Now, at first, these variants were popping up faster than scientists could study them in people. And so researchers like Pei-Yong got to work in the lab. And he needed two things to study these viruses. The first is the variants. Such as South Africa, another one from Brazil. The second thing he grabs is the blood of people who have gotten vaccinated.

And we know that this blood is chock full of antibodies against the original version of the virus. So Pei-Yong puts the blood in a dish along with these new variants, one by one. And he wants to see how well the antibodies in the blood stack up against these new viruses. Now, if the antibodies are really good, then we shouldn't need too many of them to battle against the viruses. It's kind of like if Steph Curry was shooting free throws. He'd only need one shot to sink it. If it were me, I might need a dozen more tries. It's the same with antibodies. The worse they are, the more you need. If it's a lousy antibody, then you need a lot of those. If it's

lousy? Yeah, to block the virus from infecting the cells. So when Pei Yong and other researchers do this kind of thing, what do they find? Well, for some variants, the antibodies that we make from the vaccines are still working really well. They're like Steph Curry good. But that's not true for all of them. In a petri dish, the antibodies don't seem to work quite as well for that variant that popped up in Brazil. And the South Africa variant is the most concerning. And this could be very concerning because that variant from South Africa has now been found in at least 40 countries, including the US.

So our next question is, what exactly is going on with these variants that might help them evade our vaccines? Like, what nasty tricks are they pulling in our body? For this, we called up Professor Anne Sheehy, a virologist and immunologist at the College of the Holy Cross. And she told us that these scarier variants are popping up because as the pandemic drags on and on, infecting more and more people, the virus has been busily mutating away.

Because for the virus, when it gets in our body, it's like a playground in there, right? I mean, you enter into a new host and you are off and running. So the more people that we have, the more changes the virus can test out. Because now the virus is like, woohoo, let's party down. And it can make all of these mutations at all of these places in all of these individuals. So that is potentially quite scary. How do you feel about that? Oh my goodness. Yes, I think we are absolutely in a race right now to try to stay ahead of what this virus is doing. So in this race, what mutations are happening in the virus that might explain why, in the lab at least, our vaccines don't look so hot?

Of the mutations that you've seen, is there one that is particularly scary to you? I would definitely say this EEC mutation. I think that that is terrifying. The EEC mutation. It got this nickname because the science-y name for it is E484K. E-K like EEC. And 484 means that there was a little switch up of an amino acid in the 484th position of the virus's

spike protein. And this switcheroo has been found in that concerning variant out of South Africa. And scientists have also picked it up in the one in Brazil, and more recently in viruses in the UK and the US. So what exactly is this EEC mutation doing? Well, it all comes down to the spike protein. So it's been a while since we talked about the old spike on this show, so a little reminder. To break into cells, the virus needs to jam a part of itself, the so-called spike protein, onto a receptor on our cells. Think of the receptor like a lock and the spike protein as a key. That fits nicely into the lock. That makes it go click and then that helps the virus get into the cell. So the virus is breaking into our cells using this

key, the spike. And normally, if we've been vaccinated, our immune system could fight back against the virus using antibodies. The antibodies basically grab onto the key so that it can't fit into the lock anymore. Here's how Anne puts it. Right, so when you think about a key, think about the grooves on a key, right?

So the little ridges. What the immune system is trying to do is try to cover up those grooves so that the virus cannot get in. So a spike cannot slide into the lock. The immune system is like, I'm going to stick something on there, like sticking a piece of gum on there. You're going to have a hard time getting into that lock. So normally the immune system is like, take that, you virus. Gum. But this is an arms race, where the virus has its own tricks. And the EEC mutation is the virus's way of basically giving the middle finger to our immune system and its gum trick. So, to stop the antibody binding to the spike, this mutation changes the shape of the spike ever so slightly, which makes it harder for the antibody, or the gum, to stick to it.

And now our key. It's like you coat it with WD-40, it slides in, boom, off you go. And bottom line, this all makes it harder for our antibodies to fight this virus. All this from one little tweak. It is remarkable. Yeah. I mean, even just the science knows this stuff. You know the groove and then the one little tweak in that. It's really scary. Virology is very seducing like this because it is this battle for life, ultimately, and what the virus can do and then what science is trying to catch up with. I mean, remember, the virus doesn't have a lab.

It's just you are its lab. And this EAK mutation, it's just one of many that scientists are now tracking. So here's what we know about some of the variants out there. That little Harry Styles variant out of the UK. Well, even though it's spread pretty fast and is a little more dangerous, our vaccines look like they're still working pretty good against it. But there are new kids in town that have these special tools to mess with our immune system.

And in the lab, things don't look so crash hot. After the break though, some hope. Welcome back. Today we're talking about how the coronavirus is mutating and whether this is going to muck up our chances of getting our lives back. After all, we're seeing headlines saying that these variants might crap all over our vaccination plans. And one of them in particular, the one that popped up in South Africa,

it doesn't look so great in the lab. But we're just starting to get data about how these vaccines are faring against the new variants in people. So what have they found? How are you doing? I'm all right. Dr Katie Stevenson works on vaccine development at Harvard. Big, big weekend of researching variants.

It was a big weekend, but not for the variants. We got a puppy. Oh! It's a golden retriever named Milo. Ridiculously cute. But back to the vaccines. Just today, Pfizer announced some results from their clinical trial in South Africa. And here it is.

No one who got their vaccine got COVID. It's promising news, but they weren't studying too many people over there. So to get a fuller picture of what might be going on, we looked at this big trial from Johnson & Johnson. They tested their shot in a bunch of countries around the world, including the US, when there weren't too many e-commutants floating around. And, of course, they tested it in South Africa, when the new variant was all over the place. Everyone had the new variant.

Like, it wasn't like that was just a few of the viruses. Everyone, basically over 90% of people in that study, had the new variant. Like, it wasn't like that was just a few of the viruses. Everyone, basically over 90% of people in that study, had the new variant of concern, which has all of the worst of the mutations. All right, so what did the trial show? Well, in the U.S., the vaccine was found to be 72% effective. And in South Africa, the number did drop. There, the vaccine was 64% effective. So worse, but far from useless. And Katie says where she saw some really exciting news is when you zoom in on how well the vaccine prevented really nasty cases of COVID in South Africa. Because there, it worked even better. We have real-life data with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that that prevents greater than 80%

of severe cases, and that vaccine prevented 100% of deaths. In that trial, nobody who got vaccinated died of COVID, but seven people who got the placebo shot did. Novavax also did a trial in South Africa and found something similar. While the virus wasn't crash hot at preventing mild cases, it really helped to prevent serious illness. That's what our vaccines are good at doing. They reduce the severity of illness and they make the virus much less deadly. And you might have heard that AstraZeneca was a real clunker against this variant in South Africa. But all we really know is that it doesn't do a great job of stopping mild or moderate COVID. Katie reckons it still might do all right at preventing severe disease and death.

We'll have to wait and see. And why would a vaccine be able to stop severe infection and not be that helpful for mild infection? It's really interesting. I've been thinking about that myself. So say you are exposed to a bunch of virus and you're in your nose, right? It starts replicating in your nose. It's starting to ramp up.

And then your immune system kicks in. It notices it. And your immune system, you've been vaccinated. So you've got this primed immune system. And it's like, oh, no. Katie's thinking, maybe your immune system races to take out as many viruses as it can. But because the vaccine you had wasn't amazing, your immune system can't quickly kill everything. But it still does a pretty good job.

Now you're left with virus, you're still infected, but it's just a small amount. And maybe it just stays in the nose. It doesn't even get out. And so then you have like a runny nose and a little bit of a cough. But it doesn't really get into your lungs or into your body. And so then you're protected from severe disease. And Katie told us that it makes sense that even though the virus is mutating,

our vaccines haven't become rubbish. And that's because our immune system has other tricks up its sleeve that might help us fend off these variants. Katie said that maybe some determined antibodies aren't fooled by these mutations. And plus, antibodies aren't the only sheriffs in town here. We've got stuff like T-cells. They hunt down infected cells. And it looks like they aren't so easily fooled either. Our T-cells are just better at seeing the virus, even though it has the variant. So I think that we don't have to, you know, jump on and freak out just yet or ever. All in all, Katie isn't freaking out about the new variants. And she said that while these new mutations, they might annoy our vaccination plans,

they're not going to ruin them completely. And when it comes to this uptick in cases that we're seeing in the US now, Katie thought that the variants spreading faster might be a part of this story. But another big issue is that there just aren't enough vaccines in people's arms yet, and probably too many unvaccinated people being dopes, hanging out in big groups and not being careful. So given all of this, if you've gotten your Fauci ouchie, how can you live your life? Well, for the most part, from the data we have now, the vaccines are working, even against the new strains.

And new studies are bringing in even more good news about whether you can spread the virus after you've been vaccinated. Okay, so the fear here is that you happen to catch the virus but never get symptoms and then pass it on to your unvaccinated buddy. Well, studies into lots of different coronavirus vaccines are consistently finding that getting the jab cuts down asymptomatic infections. Like just this week, a CDC paper came out showing this.

So while we can't promise this won't happen ever, it's looking like the vaccines do make this less likely. As for Katie, she feels good about the vaccine she got. It was Moderna back in December. And a couple of weeks after she got her second shot, she started feeling more and more comfortable around the vaccinated people in her life. I visited my neighbor the other day outside and she was having a bad day and she'd been vaccinated and I was like, I'm going to give you a hug.

Let's do it. It was great. Yeah. And so even with these new variants around, how are you feeling now? I feel good. I mean, my parents are vaccinated now. And the main thing is that I saw my parents without a mask. That was this weekend.

That was the first time in a year. They came into my house. They hugged the grandkids. They were not wearing a mask. We were not wearing masks. We all ate together. They stayed for several days. That's different. That's the first time in a year that we've done that. Wow. That must be so nice. It's really nice. It's really, really, really nice. But she still wears a mask when she's out in public, just in case she's going to be that rare person where the vaccine doesn't work fully. So she might get infected and spread it to someone else who's unvaccinated. And just finally, as we've been working on this episode,

the team just kept thinking, like, what's the long game here? And do these mutations change that? Because at the very start of this pandemic, there was this hope that we could get the coronavirus back in its box, totally shut it down, like we did get the coronavirus back in its box, totally shut it down like we did with the original SARS. And then things could go back to how they really were. But many researchers don't think this is likely anymore. Instead, they reckon that as this virus mutates, we'll probably need to update our vaccines and get booster shots to tackle the new strains. Anne says this might end up being a bit like how we deal with the flu. And yes, I think we will see it settle down,

but I think it's always going to be a little bit more dangerous than influenza is probably how I would put it. Do you think we're ever going to eradicate this coronavirus? Oh no, no, no. It's very nicely adapted to humans. It's not going to die out. There's been enough people that are infected, and the vaccine is unlikely to reach enough people quickly enough that I do not think we're going to see a disappearance of this. I think this will be, for everybody listening to this podcast, I think SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay. Oof. Yeah.

Oh, man. It's really like it's hard to be on the cusp of something. We're going to be telling our kids and grandkids, I remember a time when there wasn't an annual coronavirus booster shot. Yes. I know. Crazy, right? I remember a time when it wasn't an annual coronavirus booster shot. Yes, I know. Crazy, right? I remember a time when it wasn't so scary.

Absolutely. I think that's going to be, we are living in historical moment for sure. Yeah. Oh, damn it. But as crappy as all this might feel and as awful as this past year has been, Katie says there is a bright side here. I have a new puppy.

No, really. Here's the bright side. I sometimes think we have to mean, my hospital, all hospitals were just ICUs, complete intensive care units. People were incredibly sick and severe disease was very, very common and people were dying a lot from this virus. And that is where we started with this. So I still think that with our current vaccines, even against these new variants, I don't think we're going to go back there. I mean, really, we are not going back to square one. I think that's like the thing I really want to convey about the variants. We're not going

backwards. You know, we still have improvements to make, but we're starting in such a better place than we were a year ago. That's science versus. Hello? Hi. Sorry, I think I might have the wrong number. Is this Taylor? No.

All right. Sorry about that. All right. Bye. Bye. Hello? Hey. All right. All right, let me do this properly. Hello, Taylor White, our amazing intern at Science Versus.

Hi. How many citations are in this week's episode? We have 121 citations. 121. Oh, jeepers. And if people want to see these citations, where should they go? You can go to the website and click on the transcript link. Also this week on Instagram, we're going to put a photo of Milo, the puppy.

Oh, great. Did you see the photo? Yes, yes, the little tiny dog. That's basically the description. But if people want to see Milo, head over to our Instagram, which is science underscore VS. Thanks, Taylor. Bye.

Bye. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimler, Nick Del Rose, and Meryl Horne, with help from Michelle Dang and Taylor White. We're edited by Blythe Terrell, with help from Caitlin Kenny. Fact-checking by Taylor White. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Peter Leonard, Marcus Begala, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord.

A huge thanks to all of the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, as well as our amazing listeners who called us and told us about their experiences with the vaccines. We listened to all of them and they were just so amazing and beautiful. So thank you so much for sharing your stories. A special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.

I'm Wendy Zuckerman. I'll back to you next time.