The Body Scientific

In an extraordinary 20 months, science has tackled the SARS-CoV-2 virus and made vaccines for adults and children. Scientists have developed monoclonal antibodies that help if given early; we now have the first drugs that could stop infections or tilt the immunological fight in favor of the patient.

My wife does not like clutter. When she sees 50 issues of Nature, the British science magazine, piled on my desk, she gets a little peremptory. Out! she said. I decided on the dignity of an orderly retreat. I had been looking for subjects to write about in what I hope will be a post-COVID world. Call it an act of faith, or at least optimism.

We need a break from COVID-19, that miserable virus. There was science before it and there will be science after it, but for now, a scientific voyage at sea is just the escapism, we, or at least I, am after. So, let’s join Charles Darwin and Captain Robert FitzRoy on HMS Beagle. 

I was looking forward to writing about something other than COVID-19 and there is a lot to discuss. But first, let’s put the delta variant into some context. General Colin Powell once said, “The enemy always gets a vote” and hopeful situations can change, even if the enemy is a virus.

I confess I was writing a summary of my articles on SARS-CoV-2 and it was not going well. Maybe I will start from scratch, but in the meantime, my colleagues Kelly Kandra and Elias Olsen and I have made a video. (It is a little stiff, but we will get better at it).

We live in evolutionary competition with microbes—bacteria and viruses.  There is no guarantee that we will be the survivors.  ­

— Joshua Lederberg

Three vaccines have passed Phase 3 tests — that last step before submitting the data to the FDA for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). These are the two vaccines made by Pfizer and by Moderna, both of which consist of an mRNA molecule wrapped in lipid.

On Jan.10, 2020, Chinese scientists published the genome sequence of a novel virus by depositing a file in Genbank, a digital resource for DNA sequences at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). People at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease used that sequence to make a vaccine, one of 11 now in Phase 3 clinical trials.