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1. This is the last thread I will have as curator for today. So there has been a lot of talk about COVID-19 and all of us have had to become experts overnight
. All this is understandable because this is a true existential threat that we all face today.
. All this is understandable because this is a true existential threat that we all face today.
2. There are many questions and conspiracies floating around and it is important to note that some of them are conspiracies witch are not based on fact or science. I will try to unpack some of the science behind the vaccines and understanding of they work.
3. We will also look at different types of vaccines and a little bit of the science behind the design of the current vaccines so that at least we are aware of what is happening in that arena.
4. Commonly asked questions include: was this virus manufactured in a lab? The simple answer to that is the evidence at hand does not suggest this to be the case. Here is a paper that delves into that https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
5. It is also important to know that there are still some unanswered questions around the exact origin and it is convenient to suggest some nefarious agenda by the East or West or North but never Africa...coz we know we aren't capable of that which is interesting.
6. Now lets say someone engineered this virus, given the advances that have been made in genomics and sequencing surely they would make sure this virus targets a specific group of people right? What's the point of making a virus that can infect you too? 
7. Is there a difference in the manner in which COVID-19 infects and affects people? Yes, due to humans having clustered in groups there are genetic markers that are common in a population but even in those populations we have single base pair differences called SNPs.
8. To learn more about this visit this site: https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Single-Nucleotide-Polymorphisms
9. Severity of infection is also genetic. There is some evidence that some populations carry markers that can increase the risk of severe infection. People who carry some Neanderthal gene have increased severity of infection compared to Africa. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/neanderthal-gene-found-many-people-may-open-cells-coronavirus-and-increase-covid-19
10. Africans, specifically black Africans do not carry those markers so some have suggested that this was the reason why we had relatively low cases of COVID-19 initially. But there are many other factors to consider and this might not be the only one.
11. Some people are actually better protected than others from infection! This is actually a pretty unique feature in a few people as depicted this gentleman https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/he-unknowingly-had-covid-19-now-his-blood-contains-rare-n1254232
12. What are the types of vaccines available for COVID-19? So we have viral vectors vaccines such as the OxfordAZ type and the vector commonly used is the adenosine type 5 vector. PfizerBNT uses a small lipid non-viral vector to deliver the RNA into a human cell.
12. Moderna uses a slightly different approach but the design basis is similar. The graphic below shows the different forms of vaccine designs we are witnessing in mordern times.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2798-3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2798-3
13. Sinopharma which is the Chinese designed version is an inactivated coronavirus version. They are the only company to have actual brought this type of vaccine to clinical trials.
14. Why was behind development so fast?
Well there are a lot of things that led to these vaccines being rolled out quickly. First thing is that people have been studying Sars "family" of viruses since the last outbreak in the early 2000s. So it was a new virus, but info was there
Well there are a lot of things that led to these vaccines being rolled out quickly. First thing is that people have been studying Sars "family" of viruses since the last outbreak in the early 2000s. So it was a new virus, but info was there
15. The advent of computational methods for designing and analyzing drugs also sped up the identification of the key parts of the virus it needs to infect people also known as the spike protein.
16. In fact, the paper that made the knowledge of the spike protein was published in 2015 after having been rejected by journals 5 times! It is a story of perseverance and imagine if this knowledge had not be published... It could have a huge setback in terms of vaccine devpmt.
