{"id":43465,"date":"2021-12-13T13:26:31","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T20:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/?p=43465"},"modified":"2025-02-28T11:46:47","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T18:46:47","slug":"covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19: What we\u2019ve learned since the beginning of the pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>
\"We've
UCHealth held a giant Covid-19 vaccine deployment at Coors Field on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2021, aiming to vaccinate 10,000 people that weekend. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon for UCHealth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two years may feel like an eternity to a world weary of the coronavirus pandemic. In terms of scientific development, it\u2019s been the blink of an eye, and we’ve learned a lot during that blink.<\/p>\n

A century separated Charles Darwin\u2019s \u201cThe Origin of Species\u201d and the discovery of DNA\u2019s double helix. Another half century or so passed before gene editing took hold.<\/p>\n

Humanity\u2019s ability to fight SARS-CoV-2 has gained enormously from the lessons learned during those and more recent decades. Within about a month of novel coronavirus cases being conclusively identified in December 2019, Chinese scientists had sequenced the coronavirus genome. With that, the global race to find ways to stop the virus\u2019s spread and prevent those infected from getting seriously ill commenced. As the virus mutates and burns through vulnerable populations and the Greek alphabet, that race continues.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Thomas Campbell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ever since, the vast majority of us who aren\u2019t scientists have had a front-row seat in the hit-or-miss world of hypothesis development and the empirical research that follows it.<\/p>\n

What we’ve learned during the pandemic<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After emptying stores of bleach and disinfecting wipes, we learned that surface transmission<\/a> wasn\u2019t in fact much of a driver of this particular disease (though it is with many others) \u2013 rather, aerosol transmission<\/a> through the air we breathe was causing most infections. With that insight, we further learned that masking slows COVID-19\u2019s spread<\/a>, which we learned<\/a> can happen before symptoms present (presymptomatically) or in the total absence of symptoms (asymptomatically). We learned the hard way that COVID-19 infections are nastier among the aged, the overweight and obese (perhaps because we learned that the coronavirus attacks fat tissue<\/a>), those with diabetes, the immunocompromised, and other population segments. We learned that pregnant women who catch the coronavirus have a higher risk<\/a> of preterm births.<\/p>\n

We learned that infusing convalescent plasma<\/a> from those who have recovered from COVID-19 doesn\u2019t help fight coronavirus infections, nor does zinc<\/a> or hydroxychloroquine<\/a>. Ivermectin probably doesn\u2019t<\/a>, either, though the clinical trials proving or disproving that statement remain to be published. Those findings will soon join the more than 20,000 papers<\/a> dedicated to some facet of a zombie life form of which 10 billion \u2013 a number greater than that of the global human population it continues to menace \u2013 could fit in a single layer atop your fingernail.<\/p>\n

Greatest hits during a global pandemic<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If those were misses, there have been hits. Foremost among these has been the development of mRNA vaccines. Dr. Thomas Campbell<\/a>, a University of Colorado School of Medicine and UCHealth virologist, described the famous Pfizer and Moderna products as having had a \u201chuge, huge impact,\u201d in preventing initial infection and, more importantly, in preventing severe disease among those who end up with breakthrough infections.<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan
Dr. Jonathan Samet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe vaccines\u2019 job is not to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection as much as it is to keep people out of the hospital and keep people from dying, and they\u2019ve done that job very well,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n

Campbell says he hesitates to think about what this pandemic would have looked like without the vaccines that have proven to reduce the risk of dying of COVID-19 by a factor of 14. UCHealth hospitals are crowded with coronavirus patients despite 76% of Colorado\u2019s over-18 population and 87% of the over-65 population being fully immunized<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that, prior to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration\u2019s emergency-use authorization of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in December 2020 \u2013 less than a year after the SARS-CoV-2 virus was characterized \u2013 the speed record for vaccine development was four years (mumps, 1967<\/a>). Many scientific advances over the past quarter century contributed to the blazing pace of mRNA vaccine development.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first major pandemic since the 1918 avian<\/a> influenza,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cSometimes I wonder what it would have been like if SARS-CoV-2 had emerged then. Would it perhaps have been even worse than what that influenza did? In 1918, we didn\u2019t have mRNA technology; we didn\u2019t have the communications technologies; on the patient-care side, we didn\u2019t have ventilators \u2013 probably not much in the way of supplemental oxygen even. We could have seen many millions more people die or get seriously ill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross Kedl<\/a>, a CU School of Medicine immunologist and vaccine specialist, says the mRNA vaccines have proven to trigger a burst of antibodies that latch onto the coronavirus spike proteins and prevent the virus from entering cells \u2013 \u201cmuch higher than most vaccine platforms will deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision to provide second doses within three to four weeks of the initial dose augmented that effect, he says. Boosters coming six or so months after the second dose should provide a durable immune response, one that could last 12 to 18 months, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magnitude of immunity you can get out of an mRNA vaccine is really substantial,\u201d Kedl said.<\/p>\n

Pandemic has taught us that targets evolve<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Both Campbell and Kedl said they expect mRNA vaccines to play big roles in future immunization campaigns of all sorts.<\/p>\n

\"Ross
Ross Kedl, PhD, a professor of Immunology & Microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI think the big advantage of the mRNA vaccines is that they can be created, tested, and scaled up so quickly, and once you have an mRNA vaccine that works, it\u2019s a lot easier to produce it in large quantities than it is to produce large quantities of viral protein or whole viruses,\u201d Campbell said, referring to alternative ways to make vaccines.<\/p>\n

The relative ease of production translates into agility in being able to adjust the mRNA sequences as viruses mutate or new threats emerge, Kedl says. Moderna is already working on a combination coronavirus booster-flu vaccine<\/a> as well as boosters for the omicron variant<\/a>, which Pfizer is also developing<\/a>. Both companies have said that boosters substantially increase protection against both delta and omicron variants, and that even if breakthrough infection occurs, vaccination sharply lowers the risk of serious disease.<\/p>\n

Kedl adds that mRNA vaccines could prove to be weapons against any infectious disease in which antibodies are a primary mode of protection, \u201cand that\u2019s pretty much almost all infectious diseases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the treatment end, the advances have been more incremental, and that fact has been reflected in the stubbornly high number of fatalities among patients sick enough to be hospitalized.<\/p>\n

Changes in how patients are given oxygen or ventilated have made a difference, as has proning ventilated patients to help open up the lungs. The steroid dexamethasone has been shown to be somewhat helpful<\/a> to hospitalized patients. When given to patients before they\u2019re too sick, monoclonal antibodies developed specifically for SARS-CoV-2 infection can reduce<\/a> the chance of hospitalization by 70%. The antiviral remdesivir, which Gilead Sciences originally tested<\/a> on Ebola in 2014, can benefit<\/a> hospitalized patients, but like monoclonal antibodies, is most effective when given early<\/a> in the course of infection.

Research and guidelines around monoclonal antibody therapy continue to evolve as new variants of COVID-19 emerge. Please check\u00a0here\u00a0<\/a>for the latest update on monoclonal antibody therapy at UCHealth..<\/div>\n

New antivirals<\/a> developed specifically to combat SARS-CoV-2 are on the way. Merck\u2019s molnupiravir, which reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 30% if taken within five days of symptom onset, is on the cusp of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. Pfizer\u2019s entry here appears to be even more potent \u2013 89% effective<\/a> at preventing hospitalization when given within three days of symptom onset. Unlike remdesivir, which requires an infusion, the Merck and Pfizer antivirals come as pills that are much easier to administer to outpatients. They also target viral proteins important in viral replication \u2013 and not coronavirus spike proteins \u2013 and so should be effective across coronavirus variants (though, in molnupiravir\u2019s case, potentially risky<\/a> for pregnant women). The federal government has ordered both pills by the millions.<\/p>\n

As impressive as mRNA vaccines have been, \u201cantivirals are not easy to make,\u201d Kedl said, and to make them within less two years of the coronavirus\u2019s discovery bodes well for humanity\u2019s ability to combat future pandemics.<\/p>\n

Better models take into account lessons learned during pandemic<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The scientific advances haven\u2019t been limited to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Dr. Jonathan Samet<\/a>, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and leader of the Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Group<\/a>, said the group\u2019s models have become increasingly sophisticated as they\u2019ve taken into account lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. That\u2019s improved the projections given to state leaders as guidance in implementing policies to slow COVID-19 transmission and determine the need to expand health care system capacity for COVID-19 patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now need to build in booster status and vaccination for 5- to 11-year-olds, for example,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cWe also have altered the model over time to account for the more transmissible delta variant, and we are now thinking about omicron.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samet added that national modeling efforts are combining the results of multiple models \u2013 ensembles \u2013 much as is done in modern weather forecasting. In some ways, modeling COVID-19 is harder than modeling the weather, though, because new variants can change the model\u2019s basic assumptions. It would be like a weather model suddenly dealing with an entirely new form of precipitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll models are challenged at times by reality, particularly when the direction of the pandemic is not clear,\u201d Samet said.<\/p>\n

On the public health side, \u201cwe still have the same public health tools for ending the pandemic, and their utility has been diminished in some places by their politicization,\u201d Samet said. \u201cMy impression is that the politics of NPIs [nonpharmaceutical interventions] have become more difficult over time. And we face the unanticipated challenge of large number of unvaccinated people who maintain the pandemic, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, there have been failures with the successes. But taken together, scientific advances over the past two years \u2013 particularly the development of mRNA vaccines \u2013have proven monumental both in beating back the relentless advance of the coronavirus as well as in establishing new bases from which to defend against future pandemics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years may feel like an eternity to a world weary of the coronavirus pandemic. In terms of scientific development, it\u2019s been the blink of an eye, and we’ve learned a lot during that blink. A century separated Charles Darwin\u2019s \u201cThe Origin of Species\u201d and the discovery of DNA\u2019s double helix. Another half century or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":43531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4859,4860,9069,162],"class_list":["post-43465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-covid-19-vaccine","tag-infectious-diseases"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCOVID-19: What we've learned during the pandemic - UCHealth Today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientific advances, including the speedy development of a new class of vaccines, is one example of what we've learned during the pandemic.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"COVID-19: What we\u2019ve learned since the beginning of the pandemic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Scientific advances, including the speedy development of a new class of vaccines, is one example of what we've learned during the pandemic.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"UCHealth Today\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/uchealthorg\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-13T20:26:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-02-28T18:46:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/uchealth-wp-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2021\/12\/15152609\/UCHealth_CoorsFieldCovidVaccines0606-tiny.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Todd Neff, for UCHealth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@uchealth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@uchealth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Todd Neff, for UCHealth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Todd Neff, for UCHealth\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/da7733ff5562e48e55c027d111ee5911\"},\"headline\":\"COVID-19: What we\u2019ve learned since the beginning of the pandemic\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-12-13T20:26:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-02-28T18:46:47+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1763,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uchealth-wp-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/6\\\/2021\\\/12\\\/15152609\\\/UCHealth_CoorsFieldCovidVaccines0606-tiny.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Coronavirus\",\"COVID-19\",\"COVID-19 vaccine\",\"Infectious diseases\"],\"articleSection\":[\"News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.uchealth.org\\\/today\\\/covid-19-what-weve-learned-during-pandemic\\\/\",\"name\":\"COVID-19: What we've learned during the pandemic - 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