The Challenging Search for a COVID-19 Vaccine

By Ava Eliasson and Julianne Pelcak 

   What’s next?  In our lives, we’ve faced a rollercoaster of twists and turns with the pandemic dominating life as we know it.  The public has waited in anticipation of an antidote for COVID- 19, and, since March, several pharmaceutical companies have been working towards this goal. In the meantime, we may wonder, how will the world return to normalcy without an accessible vaccine?  Well, with New York having over twenty-one thousand cases of COVID- 19 as of November 29, this dire situation must be remedied in order to halt further illness and death.  

   You most likely received several vaccines via shots and needles when you were very young.  These vaccines were given to increase your immunity to dangerous illnesses.  A vaccine takes a disease and weakens it to the point that if it were to enter our bodies, it would not make us sick. From this description, you may think that creating a vaccine would be simple for COVID-19 because we could just extract the virus from an ill individual.  However, COVID-19 has been mutating into different forms since the beginning of this pandemic.  When a virus mutates, it undertakes different qualities. This makes it harder to create a vaccine that can weaken it, since it must take all mutations into account. 

   Even with these challenges presented, Pfizer, an American Biopharmaceutical Company, along with BioNTech, a European Biopharmaceutical Company, have created a COVID-19 vaccine that is 95% effective.  It was recently approved for distribution in the US on December 11th.   Other companies currently developing vaccines include Novavax, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi & GlaxoSmithKline, and Moderna (Moderna’s 94%vaccine was also recently approved by the FDA).  

  The way it will work is the vaccine will be injected, and once the body senses COVID-19, it will make a plan to attack using killer T cells. After the virus is fought off, antibodies create a memory of it.  This memory of COVID-19 sits in our bloodstream so the body is prepared if COVID-19 were to enter the body again, killing it off immediately. Interestingly enough, the annual flu shot has proven that vaccination is more effective relative to younger age because older immune systems do not respond as well.  Luckily, vaccines in multiple doses such as the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which will be given in two doses and four weeks apart, can theoretically overcome this problem.  Adjuvants or immune system boosters contained in the vaccine contenders are aluminum salts, emulsion mixtures, TLR agonists, and even shark liver oil (squalene) or soapbark tree compounds found across the globe.  What is a toxin to our body actually stimulates our internal defense system.

   The COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed to first responders first, and then the general public. The process of herd immunity is said to take five to ten years, and the World Health Organization does not expect to have everyone vaccinated until the middle of 2021.  In the meantime, to ensure the safety of you and those around you, wear a mask, stay at least six feet apart, and continue to take preventive measures in all that you do.

Learn more information from the CDC, the National Institute of Health, or the New York State Department of Health.    

Stay Safe!