Now this is potentially very interesting, and if it holds up could be hugely important.
Last week scientists at University of Birmingham reported developing a nasal spray which could provide protection against Covid-19 – although the work has not yet been peer-reviewed and published in the scientific literature.
Yes, OK, you may say; so what? Well the interesting – and potentially important – part is that it is based on two naturally occurring polysaccharide (polymerised sugar) gelling agents, carrageenan (E407/E407a) and gellan (E418), which already have worldwide approval for use in the food industry – so they’re already safety tested and widely available. This means, if the results hold up in vivo, a nasal spray could be developed and manufactured quite quickly and presumably cheaply.
The other interesting part is that the nasal spray uses the gelling properties of the two agents to encapsulate the virus particles (thus neutralising them), rather than any form of biochemical/medical destruction.
The spray could be especially useful in situations where it is difficult to provide normal “barrier” methods to inhibit transmission – although it is unlikely to be a replacement for such measures.
It seems to me the importance goes even wider than this. Surely such a method should be useable as a protective against many other air-borne viruses (like colds and flu) and possibly even bacteria.
This seems so simple, one has to wonder why we’ve never thought of it before!
Last week’s New Scientist carried several good articles on Covid-19 vaccines etc. If you have access to New Scientist or their website (which is paywalled) they’re worth reading. As usual, as they’re paywalled I’m going to be a little naughty and give you a key extracts from three of the articles. (Links to the articles are at the foot of the page.)
We can’t be certain the coronavirus vaccines will stop the pandemic
So things look good. But we are still a long, long way from a vaccine that will get us back to life as normal. That is in no small part due to the huge challenge of manufacturing, distributing and administering one … plus the reluctance of a significant minority of people to get vaccinated.
How long will immunity last? … We simply don’t know yet how long protection from any vaccine will last.
Vaccine efficacy does not always predict vaccine effectiveness … various reasons …a major one is that the deployment of a vaccine on the ground, to millions or billions of people, is much more challenging than administering it within a tightly regimented clinical trial. That is especially true of a two-shot vaccine that relies on people showing up to two appointments, often weeks apart.
The trials aren’t going to tell us what, if any, effect a vaccine has on severe illness … unless urgent changes are made to the way the trials are designed and evaluated, we could end up with approved vaccines that reduce the risk of a mild infection but do not decrease the risk of hospitalisation, [ICU] use or death. This seems outlandish, but … it comes down to the trials’ end point. In all the phase III trials, this is defined as the prevention of mild covid-19 symptoms … such a result tells us next to nothing about whether the vaccine is stopping infected people from getting really sick.
The trials appear designed to answer the easiest questions in the least amount of time, not the most clinically important ones … It is possible to do a Covid-19 clinical trial with severe disease as an end point … but it would be a major undertaking because that outcome is still quite rare. The studies do not have adequate numbers of patients to be able to reliably tell us if they prevent severe disease.
We don’t know how people who have had the virus and recovered will respond to any of the vaccines … We also don’t know whether the vaccines will put pressure on the virus to mutate.
The seemingly simple question “does this Covid-19 vaccine work?” is surprisingly hard to answer.
The Biggest Logistics Challenge in History: What will it take to get a covid-19 vaccine to the world?
Vaccines don’t save lives … Vaccination does.
When a Covid-19 vaccine is approved, it will trigger a staggeringly complex chain of events. These events must occur in perfect lockstep using a global supply chain that needs to reach even the planet’s most remote areas – the same supply chain that left parts of the world in desperate need of things like disposable gloves and protective equipment just months ago. The scale and magnitude of what we’re talking about doing is just unparalleled.
The key to overcoming complexity is planning and planning early.
How many people need to be vaccinated to end the pandemic depends on how effective the vaccine is, and how long the immunity it provides lasts … that figure [may be] 60 per cent. Given we now number 7.7 billion, and most of the vaccine candidates in late-stage trials require at least one booster, that is a staggering 9 billion or so doses.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to make enough doses to vaccinate 25 million people by the end of 2020, and 630 million people in 2021 … Making all this vaccine requires a lot of upfront cash.
The US government has invested $6.5 billion in Covid-19 therapeutics and vaccines … [and] … will own more than 700 million doses from at least six different companies. The UK government has signed [deals] agreeing to buy a total of 340 million doses at set prices from at least six firms.
Once vaccines have been approved and manufactured … the challenge remains to package, ship and administer them to more people and in a shorter … time than ever before. While supplies like alcohol swabs, gloves, bins for used needles, pallets, plastic wrap and syringes can all be made by a wide array of manufacturers, the scale of the demand may be hard to cope with.
One of the challenges … is that vaccines are shipped by air and can arrive almost anywhere on the planet in one to three days. Syringes, being bulkier and with a shelf life of around five years, are typically sent by boat and truck. They can take two to four months to reach their destination.
Covid-19 vaccines will be stored and shipped in special glass vials. These are resistant to shattering at temperature extremes and less chemically reactive than standard glass … almost exclusively made from borosilicate glass. The main worry is that this glass requires special sand … and a breakdown at any point in the chain could bring vaccination efforts to a halt.
Once the vials are filled, they will need to be distributed – and quickly. The … airline industry … has estimated that providing a single dose to everyone on the planet would require enough vaccine to fill 8000 Boeing 747 cargo planes.
How they are transported is another challenge: all 12 of the leading vaccine candidates will need to be kept cold to stabilise the sensitive ingredients. Moderna’s [vaccine] will need to be stored at -20°C, a temperature that can be reached by most household freezers. [Pfizer’s] vaccine will need to be far colder: -70°C. That requires special freezers that can reach -80°C, the kind used to store things like bacterial cells in labs or sperm in fertility clinics. Pfizer has designed new insulated, suitcase-sized containers that will be packed with dry ice to maintain temperatures below -70°C and can keep the vaccine stable for up to 15 days. Each container can hold up to 4875 doses and will need to be refilled with 23 kilograms of dry ice every five days.
At some air hubs in the US and Europe, UPS is building freezer farms. Each of the 600 freezers in one of its farms will be able to hold 48,000 doses of vaccine.
Things get trickier when products are on the road … it gets most difficult in the “last mile” … In low and middle-income countries, drivers on motorbikes typically deliver vaccines and other medical products to villages in remote areas.
More worrisome are unanticipated shortages … there are a lot of hypotheticals and you have to plan and prepare for all of them … you need to have the right infrastructure and capacity in place to handle what’s going to be a relatively short, sharp shock to the supply system … coordinating the administration of a vaccine and booster on a global scale isn’t something the world has experience with … at [the scale] needed to open up society.
Political challenges to overcome, not least the willingness of people to actually get vaccinated.
In the UK … there are concerns that changing trade agreements under Brexit could delay the transit of vaccines or even leave them stranded at the border.
As long as we leave a region or country without access, the virus will come back
Heidi Larson interview: How to stop covid-19 vaccine hesitancy
One of the reasons rumours and misinformation are getting more traction now is because we have a lot of uncertainty. Things are changing every day, and people are anxious and want an answer. We have a perfect storm for rumour spread.
In the UK, the US and other countries, in May only 5 per cent said they would definitely not take a vaccine. Now, that’s up to more like 15 per cent.
Across the UK and US is if you are lower income … you are non-white and female, you are more likely to refuse a Covid vaccine … These communities could benefit the most but they are the least trusting of government.
We don’t have a misinformation problem as much as we have a relationship problem [between the public and health systems].
What reasons do people give for not wanting to use the vaccine?
Safety … It’s “too new” … Could we get long covid from the vaccine?
We have to do a better job of explaining why things are moving faster. We are not short-cutting old processes. It’s because we have brand new [vaccine] platforms, new technology.
On the health authority side you get more formalistic “everybody do this” messages, it’s almost monotone. The public has a lot of different questions. So when they hear the same message they think we [public health officials] really don’t hear them, that’s not answering their questions.
The Covid response is a real opportunity to change [health authorities’] relationship with the public. If we rebuild our relationship with the public so they feel we are a caring, listening health authority or government, that will make a huge difference.
And so we come inexorably to the end of another month, and our round-up of links to items you missed before and really don’t want to miss again. There’s lots in this month’s pack, so here goes …
Science, Technology, Natural World
DON’T PANIC! The massive star Betelgeuse could be 175m light years closer to us than was previously thought.
How does 2 meters of DNA fold up by a factor of 250,000 to fit in the cell nucleus (which has a diameter of around 10 millionths of a meter)? [LONG READ]
Who knew that the Victorians were into collecting and pressing seaweeds? Turns out to be a useful resource for studying the oceans.
The giant geoglyphs of Peru’s Nazca Lines remain an enigma especially when researchers uncover a lounging cat! (Are we really sure it’s not April Fool’s Day?)
A look at the history of Waltham Abbey, from Saxon times to its destruction by Henry VIII. This is especially interesting for me as it is just across the marshes from where I grew up.
Now here’s an interesting idea: when things look bleak, thinking in terms of “hope horizons” can help. [£££££]
And finally … If our scientific theories are correct you don’t have free will, and you can’t change it, so don’t worry about it. But believe in free will if you wish, because in the words of Edward N Lorenz:
We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.
I’ve just come across this tetra-Limerick which I’d not seen before. It amused me today, in a science-y way …
It filled Galileo with mirth
To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.
He gladly proclaimed,
“Their rates are the same,
And quite independent of girth!”
Then Newton announced in due course
His own law of gravity’s force:
“It goes, I declare,
As the inverted square
Of the distance from object to source.”
But remarkably, Einstein’s equation
Succeeds to describe gravitation
As spacetime that’s curved,
And it’s this that will serve
As the planets’ unique motivation.
Yet the end of the story’s not written;
By a new way of thinking we’re smitten.
We twist and we turn,
Attempting to learn
The Superstring Theory of Witten!
Once more unto the breach, dear comrades, to bring you this month’s selection of links to items you may have missed the first time round. And an e-glass of e-ale to anyone who can knit the links into a coat of mail!
Science, Technology, Natural World
Let’s begin with another look at why wasps are so annoying, but yet so useful.
Oh and for anyone wanting to scare their visitors, you can buy a roughly five times life-size model of an Asian Giant Hornet (aka. “murder hornet”).
If you never understood why mathematics is so fascinating, take a look at odd perfect numbers. [LONG READ]
The logistics around distribution of any vaccine (well any drug really) are complex, especially when one gets into the realm of Cold Chain Distribution.
Medieval sermons were one of the most effective and wide-reaching forms of propaganda, but that only works if they are in the vernacular. [LONG READ]
The people of medieval Europe were devoted to their dogs. [LONG READ]
Transport until the early part of the 20th century was largely dependent on the horse: either being ridden or pulling a wagon of some description. Here’s a look at horse transport in Victorian times.
If you’re dreading a long, dark winter lockdown, then maybe the Norwegians have something for you.
So what does your cat mean by “miaow”? A Japanese vet is apparently earning a fortune telling people what their cats are saying. Personally I thought we had a fairly good idea!
Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!
Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, has been awarded a gold medal for his work detecting landmines in Cambodia. I must say he’s a rather handsome animal, and well deserving of his apparently upcoming retirement.
And finally, what is the connexion between frozen shit and narcissists’ eyebrows? Yes, of course, it’s this year’s Ig Nobel prizes.
Although I’ve not written about nuclear power for a long while, long-standing readers will know my conviction that we have to invest in nuclear technology. I see no other way in which we can generate sufficient electricity, even for reduced demand, from renewable resources – important though these are.
Now I would never pretend that nuclear power doesn’t have it’s challenges. Regardless of what type of reactor is chosen, the technology is hard, decommissioning is hugely expensive, and there is the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste. However these are largely soluble problems: see for instance my posts Nuclear Power Redux and Better Nuclear Power.
One thing nuclear doesn’t have, though, is an excess of deaths compared with any other power source. In fact nuclear power is the gold standard to be beaten.
Estimates from Europe Union, which account for immediate deaths
from accidents and projected deaths from exposure to pollutants.
(And this does not include fatality rates in countries like China where
cheap coal and poor regulation cause considerably more fatalities.)
A large part of the reluctance to embrace nuclear power is down to the fact that people are generally scared of it. Why? Because they can’t see it and they don’t understand it – so it is very scary! Back in the day people were frightened of electricity because they couldn’t see it and it appeared to be magic – see, for example, this from America in 1900.
It’s a bit like being in a strange, unlit, house overnight and hearing a very odd, creaky, noise. We’d all find that a bit scary. But if we can see the bedroom door swinging on its hinges in the draught it isn’t anywhere nearly as frightening.
In the article Rowlatt makes the case that nuclear energy is nothing like as dangerous as we think it is, even when we account for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima. He ends by saying:
But here’s the thing: if we were a bit less concerned about the risks of low levels of radiation then maybe we could make a more balanced assessment of nuclear power.
Especially given that coal-fired power stations routinely release more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power stations, thanks to the traces of uranium and thorium found in coal.
And, since we are talking about worrying about the right things, let’s not forget the environment.
Taking a more balanced view on the risks of radiation might help all those anxious climate scientists I mentioned at the start of this piece sleep a bit easier in their beds at night.
I’ll leave it up to you to read the rest of the article.
It’s been quiet round here recently. Nevertheless we’ve been collecting our usual list of links to items you missed the first time. And this month we have an edition packed with some good (long) reads …
Science, Technology, Natural World
Astronomer Martin Rees looks at how we’ve discovered that the universe is much bigger and weirder than anyone thought … [£££] [LONG READ]
… or as our favourite theoretical physicist, Katie Mack, points out: space is big and our planet a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Now to more mundane matters … here are two articles, one from the Conversation the other from the Guardian, on how vets identified Coronavirus in a cat.
A few weeks back, when the weather was nicely tropical, Diamond Geezer took a look at the technical definition of a heatwave – and it isn’t as simple as you might think.
Really tiny, but really cute: Leaf Sheep,
apparently the only animal that can photosynthesise.
The Somali Sengi (a species of elephant shrew) is a really cool critter: it mates for life, can race around at 30km/h and sucks up ants with its trunk-like nose – and having been thought extinct ecologists have recently rediscovered it in Djibouti.
Health, Medicine
A view from inside the NHS on what it was like trying to cope with a sudden deluge of Covid-19 patients. [LONG READ]
Covid-19 is here for the long haul: here’s how scientists predict the pandemic might play out over the next months and years.
Pace Richard Dawkins, it is suggested that humans aren’t inherently selfish, but hardwired to work together. (Until the ship gets overcrowded that is.)
The origins of modern humans get more complex with every new twist of DNA analysed. I have to ask whether we’re actually sure that Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, H. erectus (and maybe others) aren’t actually just one species with some very well-defined sub-species. [LONG READ]
It turns out that our medieval friends had a thing about sex with demons. [LONG READ]
And now to almost modern demons of a different kind. Here’s an old article about a potentially huge explosion lurking in a wreck off the Kent coast. [LONG READ]
There’s a Zoroastrian centre not far from here, so I’ve always wondered what they’re about. Here’s a look into the very closed world of a strange religion. [LONG READ]
Postcrossing has been around for a while. It’s an interesting idea involving swapping postcards with unknown people around the world as a way of building global friendship.
Once again we come to our monthly collection of links to items you missed the first time round and which you’ll find interesting. This month we have a well packed collection (lots of science and lots of history), so it’s straight in the deep end.
Science, Technology, Natural World
Astronomers still think there’s a large planet out beyond Pluto, so of course they’re still hunting for it (artist’s impression above).
Scientists still don’t know how birds navigate, though it is likely magnetic and they’re narrowing down the options.
30 years ago Red Kites were reintroduced to the Chilterns to the west of London, and this has proven to be a huge conservation success. (I’m 30 miles east of the release area, and in suburban London, and I now regularly see Red Kites over this area.)
Where have all our swifts gone? Are they on the Grand Tour?
There’s a growing realisation that old paintings can provide valuable information about agriculture both livestock and arable. [£££]
An astronomer has finally(?) pinpointed the exact date and time of Vermeer’s “View of Delft” (above).
The British Library has acquired an important archive of Mervyn Peake‘s original illustrations, preliminary drawings and unpublished early works (example below).
Going Medieval (again) introduces us to the magnificent Agas Map of London (it’s detailed and zoomable!) as well as the lfe of medieval and early modern cities. [LONG READ]
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
And finally for this month … Dungeness is one of my favourite places and the late Derek Jarman’s cottage and garden (thankfully saved for the nation) is an absolute delight (below). Now there’s an exhibition about Jarman’s garden at the Garden Museum in London.
Here are our links to items you may have missed in the last month. There’s a lot this month, so let’s dive in.
Incidentally [£££] indicates the article may be behind a paywall, although most of these sites do offer a limited number of free articles so don’t ignore them.
Science, Technology, Natural World
First off, here’s an old article from New Scientist in which Roger Penrose asks What is Reality? [£££]
So out of the crow’s nest and into the fire … What you always thought you knew about why males are the taller sex is probably wrong.
It seems there is growing evidence that we should be taking seriously the potential of psychedelic drugs to treat depression. Well I’d certainly be up for trying it.
Tick-borne Lyme Disease can develop into a debilitating chronic condition. [£££] [LONG READ]
If we thought Medievals had odd ideas, then Enlightened Man (in 17th and 18th centuries) was in many ways stranger; shaving and periwigs were the least of it. [LONG READ]
From Tudor times Protestants have been intermittently persecuted in mainland Europe, and escaped to Britain. Here’s a piece on the history of the Huguenots in London. [LONG READ]
I read quite a bit of scientific material. Not the deep research papers; those days are long gone and my knowledge is too out of date to follow along with immensely detailed analyses of ever more intricate experiments. What I do read is the commentary for the intelligent layman: the specialist science journalism in, for example, New Scientist, Science, Scientific American, Quanta, and various other places elsewhere online.
I don’t read everything – there isn’t time, and anyway there are subjects like climate change, extra-terrestrial life and artificial intelligence which bore me rigid.
[No I didn’t say they aren’t important, or don’t exist; I just said they’re not things I can enthuse over.]
The more I read, the more incredulous I become that anything in the living world works at all – let alone that it could have evolved from nothing, however long the timescales involved.
Apart from the way in which the SARS-CoV-2 virus seems to work, what brought this home to me most recently was and article in The Scientist about left-handed DNA. You see the normal DNA which makes up all our genes has a helical structure which twists in a right-handed direction. And the way that works is gobsmacking enough.
But DNA can twist the other way (left-handed) to form Z-DNA. This has been known for some time, but it is now thought it may have a role in cancer and autoimmune diseases. Even more bizarre is that short sections of normal DNA can flip to Z-DNA and this obviously has a major control on how the whole of the transcription process (which turns DNA code into proteins) works (or doesn’t work) – and that may be important for the prevention of autoimmune diseases or the growth of cancer.
It is fiendishly complex, and yet only one tiny piece in the corner of the jigsaw puzzle which is eukaryote metabolism. I remember when I was a postgrad student (45 years ago) having a huge A1 (maybe bigger) poster full of the (then known) metabolic pathways in tiny print. It was gobsmacking, and totally unmemorable, then and has since been shown to be many times more complex.
The way the living world works – from grass, to rabbit, to fox, and to you yourself – is absolutely incomprehensible and incredible. I can quite see why some people cannot believe in evolution and insist that the whole must be divine design. I don’t agree with that, but that makes it no less brain-addling.
Eccentric looks at life through the thoughts of a retired working thinker
So how old is the 
But DNA can twist the other way (left-handed) to form Z-DNA. This has been known for some time, but it is now thought it may have a role in cancer and autoimmune diseases. Even more bizarre is that short sections of normal DNA can flip to Z-DNA and this obviously has a major control on how the whole of the transcription process (which turns DNA code into proteins) works (or doesn’t work) – and that may be important for the prevention of autoimmune diseases or the growth of cancer.