We're going to hear more and more about various COVID mutations in the coming weeks and months. Their names, N501Y, D614G, etc. seem cryptic, and they are, but they are not arbitrary. Recall that proteins — in this case, the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2—are strings of amino acids.
The number 501 refers to the 501st amino acid in the protein. The letters refer to the amino acids themselves.
So N501Y means the original strain had an N, asparagine, in position 501. The mutation switched this position to a Y, tyrosine.
What about names like B.1.1.7? These are names of *lineages*, based on a hierarchical notation.
B is an original Chinese lineage, B.1 is the lineage that seeded the Italian outbreak, B.1.1 a European lineage derived from that, B.1.1.7 is the currently exploding UK lineage.
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Somehow @NYMag isn't using *this* line from the start of the second paragraph of Nicholson Baker's piece for their clickbait pull quotes.
"there is no direct evidence for an experimental mishap"
Meanwhile the story about scientists almost universally denying the possibility of lab release because of "political toxicity" doesn't match my recollections at all. After a conversation with colleagues last April, for example, I posted this.
Little by way of compelling new evidence has come to light, and my perspective remains largely unchanged. It's not engineered; it's most likely natural; and we can't rule out lab escape from captive animals, basic culture, or even gain-of-function studies.
The original plans were depth-first: vaccinate people in the highest risk tiers twice, and move on down the line.
The breadth-first idea is if one dose is better than half as good as two, we could slow the pandemic by getting get vaccines into as many people as possible first.
So with breadth first approaches, we would try for broad single-dose coverage and then circle back around, so to speak, for second doses. This might be e.g. 12 weeks after the first dose.
I lean depth-first, but I'm not certain which is the right approach and it's gnawing at me.
For a host of reasons I have been very skeptical of switching vaccination protocols midstream to a single vaccination approach with later followup. @Bob_Wachter is a very thoughtful doctor and public health leader with greater expertise than mine; his thoughts are worth reading.
Last week, 1.5 million doses of the COVID vaccine were administered. Given that people require two doses, it would over eight years to vaccinate the US population at this rate.
6.8 million doses were delivered—at this rate, it would two years to deliver enough for the whole US.
We're also desperately short of the promise to administer 20 millions doses in December. Of course I don't actually think it's going to take 8 years to vaccinate the entire US population. Hopefully in the next weeks we will greatly ramp up our capacity to administer vaccinations.