Welcome to the final new episode of the week for Quick News Daily. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the most important topics for our everyday lives are pretty much the same these days. We have news on COVID about vaccines and double masking. We’ve got news on some new executive orders from President Joe Biden, plus some more updates on impeachment.
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Transcript:
COVID VACCINES
Starting off the show, I want to bring a new study of the COVID vaccines to your attention. I’m not sure how this one compares to the South African study in terms of how accurate it could be, but it was led by William James, a professor of virology at the University of Oxford. I want to warn you right away that like most other studies about COVID, this one hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
His team took blood samples from people who had recovered from COVID, as well as people who had been vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. They also broke it down by whether the vaccinated volunteers had received one or two doses. They then tested this blood against one of the first variants from a year ago, the South African variant, and the UK variant (which this article from the Guardian calls the “Kent Variant”. I guess they like to blame specific areas over there).
In terms of antibodies, the blood had moderate protection against the original variant, slightly less protection against the UK version, and then no ability to neutralize the South African variant. That said, when it comes to your immune cells that fight off an infection once you get it, people who either had COVID originally or those who got one dose all had strong immune cell responses. These experts are definitely encouraged about this because they think it means our immune cells are protecting against different regions of that all-important spike protein. If they protect against more areas of that, then we could be protected against other variants that might show up.
In terms of people who got second doses, Professor James said “In more than 90% of cases, the antibodies that people are generating after the second dose are up at the sort of level that neutralises the virus and which we would expect to protect them from infection. We’re pretty confident that they’ll be protected from infection by the South African strain and the Kent strain, as well as the [original] strain of the virus.”
Since the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are very similar, it seems that if you got either of those vaccines, you should still be in pretty good shape.
I have to just take a second and tell you how much it bothers me that this article (again, since it’s from the UK) kept calling the vaccines “jabs” instead of “shots”. I know it’s just because we’ve known it as “shots”, but “jabs” just creeps me out for some reason.
DOUBLE MASKING
Finally, we have some data about whether double masking actually helps prevent you from getting COVID. This data is actually coming from the CDC, which is even more encouraging.
They found that by either wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask, or just a surgical mask with the ear loops knotted and sides tucked in to get a closer fit, you can reduce your exposure to airborne particles by over 90%!
In their experiments, they found that just by themselves, a surgical mask blocked 42% of particles if an infected person coughs, while a cloth mask blocked 44%. However, when they’re combined, they blocked 92% of particles.
When it comes to regular breathing and you’re around someone without a mask, your exposure is decreased by 65% when you do the knotting technique and 83% if you double mask. This goes up over 95% if both people are double masking or doing the knotting technique.
They also say to test that your mask is filtering correctly, you should practice wearing them i
