COVID-19
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Following science ‘only way out,’ says Leibowitz Q: How do booster shots work? A: It rejuvenates all of your memory cells, and it wakes them all up. They make a lot of antibodies, and that gives you probably more antibodies than you had from your second immunization, and it gives you another group of cells to become long-life plasma cells.
Q: Will there be a need for booster shots in the future? A: There will be new variants and ultimately, if not in the spring, in a year or two years, we will need to have a slightly different messenger RNA vaccine. The good thing about these vaccines is: you change the sequence and you fix it. You’ll have to do limited testing to show that it’s efficacious against the variants that you’re targeting, but it will be a much smaller clinical trial … so it may conclude faster.
A: By most standards … the J&J and Astrazeneca vaccines are very good vaccines, actually. It’s just that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — they’re extraordinarily good.
Q: What needs to be done to end the pandemic? A: The only way out of this pandemic — into a more normal situation — is getting people vaccinated and for people to wear face masks until the rate of transmission is down substantially.
Q: Is vaccine shortage an issue at this point in vaccine distribution? A: In this country, at least right now, there is enough vaccine to go around. The problem has been getting people to take it. If the rate of vaccine uptake was better, there would be way fewer cases and less evolution of variants that happen worldwide.
Q: How do the Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines compare to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in terms of efficacy? PROVIDED
Ending the pandemic will require higher vaccination rates and use of face masks until transmission rates are substantially lower, said Julian Leibowitz, M.D., Ph.D. (right).
By Benjamin Figueroa Julian Leibowitz is both an M.D. and Ph.D. who has been studying coronaviruses since 1977. As the director of the MD/ PhD program for the Texas A&M College of Medicine, Leibowitz is also a member of a University X-Grant team recently awarded funds to develop an mRNA vaccine platform. Q: What is the complication rate of vaccines? A: The vaccine complication rate is really low. For serious complications, it’s about as low for most vaccines that are licensed, so I think it’s been a great success, and I don’t understand … why people are hesitant.
Q: Is it a good idea to get monoclonal antibody treatment after a positive COVID-19 test as a vaccine alternative? A: No. It’s not okay. That person will be infectious before they’re sick and
they get diagnosed. It may be two to five days on average when they have symptoms. They can infect other people. They may visit their parents, their grandparents, a good friend and that friend may have an underlying condition and get seriously ill. So no, that’s not a good first strategy. It’s a good second strategy, but it’s not as good as getting the vaccine.
Q: What risks do healthy, college-age students face if they decide to not get vaccinated? A: Even though students in that age group are still at a reasonably lower risk of getting serious disease and needing to be hospitalized, 10-30 percent of them may have various symptoms of long COVID. I think, for a college student, that is a bad idea and one that most of you students would like to avoid.
COVID-19 in Brazos County Oct. 1-19, 2020 versus 2021
2020
2021
Reported Cases: 781
Reported Cases: 1,003
Death Count: 3
Death Count: 16
