Dickens on the Strand celebrates another year of fun
Hundreds mourn the death of Alex Trebek
Ariana Grande releases sixth studio album
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COVID vaccine waits for stamp of approval from FDA Photo courtesy of Flickr
By Analei Berger News and Features Editor
Ever since the middle of March, life has not been the same. With the number of COVID-19 cases in Texas alone surpassing one million, a vaccine would be a crucial turning point during the global pandemic. On November ninth, Pfizer, a drug-maker, announced that the company is in the early analysis stage of their coronavirus vaccine. The trials indicated that this is a promising sign in developing a vaccine and is some good news during this ongoing pandemic. Pfizer developed their vaccine with another German-based drug maker called BioNTech. Pfizer released that the current vaccine has over a 90% COVID prevention rate to those trial volunteers who had evidently no prior COVID infections and if those results are to maintain constant, it could be a highly effective vaccine. The company says that there have been no reported safety concerns with the vaccine. If one were to get this COVID vaccine, it would be administered in two doses that are roughly three weeks apart. In order for Pfizer to distribute this drug out to the public, the company needs to ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an emergency authorization in late November. If this request would be accepted, they would have to collect at least two months of safety data. As of now, the companies have not released whether or not the vaccine would prevent the severe cases where one goes into the hospital or prevents one from having symptoms all together. It is really early during the vaccine stages and there is still much more research to be done. After all of that, by the end of the year there is a chance that the company would manufacture enough doses for between 15 to 20 million
Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures
people. This would be the first real COVID vaccine that makes it to the late stages of trial. “I don’t want to dampen any enthusiasm for this vaccine. I just want us to be realistic. For a vaccine to really have maximal impact, it’s going to have to also reduce severe illness and death. And we just don’t know yet,”
got COVID-19. The trials were blinded so neither the doctors nor volunteers knew who got what, the only people that knew were an independent board. These are good results considering that as of now the FDA has set a 50% standard for a company to be able to submit their vaccine for an emergency authorization.
Michael Osterholm, Di- Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons If Pfizer’s vaccine got rector of the University the emergency authorization of Minnesota’s Center for from the FDA, it would be Infectious Diseases Research, said. distributed to millions, whom will be monitored Roughly 44,000 people were part of closely by the CDC and FDA to ensure there are the trials, half got a placebo of just saltwa- no severe side effects. As far as the people who ter while the other half got the actual vaccine. were part of the trials of the vaccine, they will Out of those 44,000 people, only 94 of them continue to be watched for the next two years.
Screen grab from Positions music video
Back in May, Pfizer administered four different vaccines to volunteers and of those four vaccines, they picked the vaccine that had the least amount of major side effects. Some of the side effects that have been reported have been fatigue and a slight fever. Once the vaccine is ready to be distributed to the public, there have been some debates on who will receive it the earliest. First and foremost, it is going to the doctors and nurses that work around the virus daily. Some say that it should be administered to the elderly who are most at risk first and the people with underlying health conditions. Others are saying that it should be given to the younger college students who go off to their university and bring COVID-19 back to their households. Pfizer and BioNTech are not the only companies that have a vaccine in the late stages of testing. There are ten others around the world and with the success of Pfizer’s vaccine, it is making others optimistic and encouraging in the fact that maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Some of the other countries that currently have their own clinical trials are: England, China, Thailand, Singapore, India and South Korea. Moderna, another company that has produced a vaccine with a 94.1% effective rate of COVID prevention and an astounding 100% COVID prevention rate of the severe symptoms that COVID has to offer. On November 30, Moderna plans to apply to the FDA the same as Pfizer previously did on November 20. That would make two very successful vaccines in the works. The FDA will meet in December to review both of these vaccines. It is expected that some of the first vaccines will be administered in late December. If there is more than one vaccine available around the world it could help aid the demand compared to if there was only one working vaccine. While the pandemic is nowhere near over, this is a good sign that one day life before the pandemic could become the new normal once again.
Joe Biden wins 2020 election, becoming next President-Elect By Aivry Zamora Assistant Editor A record number of Americans turned out to vote in this year’s presidential race between President Donald Trump and now President-Elect Joe Biden. President-Elect Biden won the presidency with over 74.4 million votes, garnering more votes than any presidential candidate in American history as 161 million Americans casted their ballot in the election. After four years in office, current President Trump was unable to secure a second term making him one of 11 presidents to lose re-election. Some of this year’s high turnout may be attributed to the expansion of access to mail-in ballots and early voting, with many states changing their policies due to the coronavirus pandemic. More than 100 million ballots were cast during the early voting period, a large increase from prior years. In the weeks leading up to the November third election, polls showed that many of the fault lines dividing Democrats and Republicans including age, race and education were beginning to narrow, influencing the results in Biden’s favor. Since the results of the election were announced, President Trump has claimed that voter fraud caused his loss of the presidency. His current fight to prove this has been unsuccessful with the United States Justice Department having uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election. “There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essential-
ly to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” William Barr, Attorney General, said. President Trump has long railed against the investigation into whether his 2016 cam-
to attend the inauguration of President-Elect Biden into the White House with many suspecting him to refuse to cede the presidency. Since his victory, President-Elect Biden has introduced his picks for this economic policy team including Janet Yellen for Treasury Secre-
paign was coordinating with tary, Neera Tanden, as his Photo courtesy of Unsplash Russia, but he and Republichoice to lead his Office of can allies had hoped the reManagement and Budget, sults would be delivered before the 2020 elec- Cecilia Rouse as Chair of the Council of Ecotion and would help sway voters. So far, there nomic Advisers, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo as has been only one criminal case, a guilty plea Deputy Treasury Secretary and Jared Bernstein from a former FBI lawyer to a single false state- and Heather Boushey as members of the White ment charge. He has stated that he does not plan House Council of Economic Advisers. He reit-
erated promises that his economic goals would focus on providing access to affordable health care, child-care, sick leave and family leave, investing in infrastructure and clean energy, as well as calling on Congress to pass a robust COVID-19 relief package. “I know times are tough, but I want to let you know that help is on the way,” Biden, President-Elect, said. A voter analysis from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University shows that youth voter turnout (ages 18 to 29) surged by around eight percent this year compared to 2016. Based on CIRCLE’s estimate, 53% of eligible youth voters casted votes in this election versus 45% in 2016. While young voters favored President Trump in a handful of states, a nationwide 62% of young voters casted their ballot for President-Elect Biden compared to 35% for President Trump, according to estimates from the New York Times. President-Elect Biden’s priorities surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, systemic racism and climate change are said to have been what swayed young voters in this election. “They see that the issues that matter the most to them are on the ballot, and I think four years of Trump being in office is also a really good primer to get young people excited,” Heather Greven, at NextGen America, said. Predictions surrounding the progressive nature of young Americans point to a future surrounding the resolution of civil and social rights that have gone long unattended. This uptake of social outrage has been fueled by social media, namely TikTok and its extreme influence on GenZ culture and politics. The election of Biden is what many are referring to as a “breath of air” giving way to a new era in the next four years of his presidency.