Category: Health

Understanding COVID-19 vaccines in 25 minutes

Learn how vaccines are made and how they work. Review the concept of herd immunity and why it’s so important. Recognize the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy and why it matters and may enable the spread of disease.

Recently I started listening to podcasts from AXIOS, an online news source, and have especially enjoyed their coverage of science in general and specifically the COVID-19 pandemic.

They produced 5 short videos explaining the coronavirus vaccine that I found informative and want to share with you . Each is less than 5 minutes so in about 25 minutes you will learn much about the vaccine and hopefully be more confident in your decision to get vaccinated yourself, as I and my husband have been.

Here’s the intro from AXIOS and a link to the page where you can access all 5 videos. Below I have given you an outline so you know a little of what is in each episode, but I do recommend you listen to all of them in order. They are even appropriate for kids.

(The cover photo is a scanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 (orange)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (green) cultured in the lab. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases-Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIH)

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Vaccines: A short course from Axios

Vaccines have been used for centuries to fight disease but hesitancy and disinformation about them are spreading, jeopardizing the global fight against measles, COVID-19 and other diseases.

Axios’ science and health journalists will help you understand vaccines — how they work, how they’re tested and distributed, and where vaccine technology is headed.

illustration showing the coronavirus which causes COVID-19
This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Note the spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus, which impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion, when viewed electron microscopically. In this view, the protein particles E, S, and M, also located on the outer surface of the particle, have all been labeled as well. A novel coronavirus, named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. The illness caused by this virus has been named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS, public domain

1. Vaccine basics

Learn how vaccines are made and how they work. Understand the immune system-T cells and antibodies.

Review the concept of herd immunity and why it’s so important.

These patients’ samples were to be tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) serologic test. CDC/ James Gathany, PUBLIC DOMAIN

2. Study and testing of vaccines

Find out why the research and development of vaccines costs $100 of millions. See the 3 phases of the process and why this one progressed faster than ever before.

President Joe Biden visited NIH on February 11, 2020, where he met with leading researchers at the Vaccine Research Center to learn more about the groundbreaking fundamental research that enabled the development of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.Credit: NIH/Chiachi Chang; PUBLIC DOMAIN

3. Distribution of vaccines

Understand why vaccine distribution differs from other drugs-including the manufacturing, selling, buying, and transporting.

In this 2020 photograph, captured inside a clinical setting, a health care provider places a bandage on the injection site of a patient, who just received an influenza vaccine. The best way to prevent seasonal flu is to get vaccinated every year. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends everyone 6-months of age and older get a flu vaccine every season. CDC/ Robert Denty, public domain

4. Misinformation about vaccines

Recognize the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy and why it matters and may enable the spread of disease.

  • cloth facial coverings to prevent transmission of COVID-19

5. Next generation vaccines

Explore how scientists are using the power of genetics to create new and better vaccines. Appreciate why vaccines can change our approach to disease prevention.

DNA Double Helix

Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health. Please link to www.genome.gov when possible. PUBLIC DOMAIN

Exploring the HEART of ending the COVID-19 pandemic

Dr. Aletha
Dr. Aletha inspecting her arm after a COVID-19 shot
Three days after my first vaccination the soreness in my arm was almost gone, and I had no redness or swelling. After the second shot, minimal soreness. No other side effects to report. I feel fortunate.

Reading-a resolution worth making and keeping

This post shares some medical/health-related books worth reading. ‘The NOTE THROUGH the WIRE’, a story of love amid war; ‘The Orphan Collector’, a novel set during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. The list includes best books from Amazon, People Magazine, and new titles from Tyndale, appealing to different interests. Check them out.

Every year I find more and more book lists; best books, most popular, best selling, books recommended by a celebrity or other famous person, etc. I can’t possibly read them all, but some of them sound so interesting I wish I could.

In this post I’m listing some books from these lists, all medical/health-related books, a designation I tend to interpret loosely.

(These are affiliate links to sites where you can buy something which pays a small commission to this blog to pay expenses and donate to health-related causes worldwide.)

Here is one book I read recently

The NOTE THROUGH the WIRE

In this true love story that defies all odds, Josefine Lobnik, a Yugoslav partisan heroine, and Bruce Murray, a New Zealand soldier, discover love in the midst of a brutal war.

In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. One an underground resistance fighter, a bold young woman determined to vanquish the enemy occupiers; the other a prisoner of war, a man longing to escape the confines of the camp so he can battle again. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers, slipped through the wire of the compound, and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever.

Woven through their tales of great bravery, daring escapes, betrayal, torture, and retaliation is their remarkable love story that survived against all odds. This is an extraordinary account of two ordinary people who found love during the unimaginable hardships of Hitler’s barbaric regime as told by their son-in-law Doug Gold, who decided to tell their story from the moment he heard about their remarkable tale of bravery, resilience, and resistance.

Although published in 2020, the author wrote it in 2019, not realizing how timely it would be.

The Orphan Collector

A Heroic Novel of Survival During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic 

In this well researched novel about the influenza pandemic of 100 years ago, Ms. Wiseman takes us into the heartbreak of the thousands of children orphaned by both the pandemic and the world war.

I started reading the book late in the year, by the time the COVID-19 cases and deaths were surging in number. I thought about all the people being left orphaned now, although they are not all children. Some are middle-aged adults losing their elderly parents, while others are older adults losing their young adult children.

(As of January 25, 2021, in the United States 25 million persons have been infected with COVID-19, and 420,000 have died.)

Whatever one’s age, losing loved ones to an out of control disease is heartbreaking. The Orphan Collector does not have a fairytale “happy ending”. But the main character Pia, a 12-year-old immigrant girl in Philadelphia, learns an ending different than one hoped for can be satisfying in unexpected ways.

Best Books from Amazon

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World 

In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art 

Listen to an excerpt at the link.

Best Books from People Magazine

Hidden Valley Road

Inside the Mind of an American Family

Hamnet

Penny who blogs at grownchildren.net wrote this about Hamnet

  The author paints a detailed portrait of Shakespeare’s wife as an herbalist; …he grows and culls her herbs for various ailments and dispenses them as a pharmacist today would do.

But the story is about grief and how the Shakespeares, man and wife, separately worked their way through the immense loss of their son. The portrait of her grief–we don’t learn much about his–is thrilling in its sensitivity. You don’t have to be in the medical or health field to be fascinated by this book.

What Are You Going Through

Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir

New from Tyndale

The Anxiety Reset

A Life-Changing Approach to Overcoming Fear, Stress, Worry, Panic Attacks, OCD and More 

exploring the HEART of health in literature

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Dr. Aletha
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More recommendations from Smithsonian Magazine.com

The Ten Best Children’s Books of 2020

These top titles deliver history lessons, wordplay and a musical romp through the animal kingdom

The Ten Best Science Books of 2020

New titles explore the mysterious lives of eels, the science of fear and our connections to the stars