Science
COVID-19 vaccine boosters could mean billions for drugmakers
Billions more in profits are at stake for some vaccine makers as the U.S. moves toward dispensing COVID-19 booster shots to shore up Americans’ protection against the virus.
How much the manufacturers stand to gain depends on how big the rollout proves to be.
U.S. health officials late on Thursday endorsed booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine for all Americans 65 and older — along with tens of millions of younger people who are at higher risk from the coronavirus because of health conditions or their jobs.
Officials described the move as a first step. Boosters will likely be offered even more broadly in the coming weeks or months, including boosters of vaccines made by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. That, plus continued growth in initial vaccinations, could mean a huge gain in sales and profits for Pfizer and Moderna in particular.
Read:Global leaders commit support for equitable access to Covid vaccines
“The opportunity quite frankly is reflective of the billions of people around the world who would need a vaccination and a boost,” Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said.
Wall Street is taking notice. The average forecast among analysts for Moderna’s 2022 revenue has jumped 35% since President Joe Biden laid out his booster plan in mid-August.
Most of the vaccinations so far in the U.S. have come from Pfizer, which developed its shot with Germany’s BioNTech, and Moderna. They have inoculated about 99 million and 68 million people, respectively. Johnson & Johnson is third with about 14 million people.
No one knows yet how many people will get the extra shots. But Morningstar analyst Karen Andersen expects boosters alone to bring in about $26 billion in global sales next year for Pfizer and BioNTech and around $14 billion for Moderna if they are endorsed for nearly all Americans.
Those companies also may gain business from people who got other vaccines initially. In Britain, which plans to offer boosters to everyone over 50 and other vulnerable people, an expert panel has recommended that Pfizer’s shot be the primary choice, with Moderna as the alternative.
Andersen expects Moderna, which has no other products on the market, to generate a roughly $13 billion profit next year from all COVID-19 vaccine sales if boosters are broadly authorized.
Potential vaccine profits are harder to estimate for Pfizer, but company executives have said they expect their pre-tax adjusted profit margin from the vaccine to be in the “high 20s” as a percentage of revenue. That would translate to a profit of around $7 billion next year just from boosters, based on Andersen’s sales prediction.
Read:India to restart Covid vaccine exports to COVAX, neighbours
J&J and Europe’s AstraZeneca have said they don’t intend to profit from their COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
For Pfizer and Moderna, the boosters could be more profitable than the original doses because they won’t come with the research and development costs the companies incurred to get the vaccines on the market in the first place.
WBB Securities CEO Steve Brozak said the booster shots will represent “almost pure profit” compared with the initial doses.
Drugmakers aren’t the only businesses that could see a windfall from delivering boosters. Drugstore chains CVS Health and Walgreens could bring in more than $800 million each in revenue, according to Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager with Gabelli Funds.
Jonas noted that the drugstores may not face competition from mass vaccination clinics this time around, and the chains are diligent about collecting customer contact information. That makes it easy to invite people back for boosters.
Drugmakers are also developing COVID-19 shots that target certain variants of the virus, and say people might need annual shots like the ones they receive for the flu. All of that could make the vaccines a major recurring source of revenue.
The COVID-19 vaccines have already done much better than their predecessors.
Pfizer said in July it expects revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine to reach $33.5 billion this year, an estimate that could change depending on the impact of boosters or the possible expansion of shots to elementary school children.
Read: Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine works in kids ages 5 to 11
That would be more than five times the $5.8 billion racked up last year by the world’s most lucrative vaccine — Pfizer’s Prevnar13, which protects against pneumococcal disease.
It also would dwarf the $19.8 billion brought in last year by AbbVie’s rheumatoid arthritis treatment Humira, widely regarded as the world’s top-selling drug.
This bodes well for future vaccine development, noted Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.
Vaccines normally are nowhere near as profitable as treatments, Gordon said. But the success of the COVID-19 shots could draw more drugmakers and venture capitalists into the field.
“The vaccine business is more attractive, which, for those of us who are going to need vaccines, is good,” Gordon said.
CDC panel grapples with who needs a COVID-19 booster shot
An influential panel of advisers to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention grappled Wednesday with the question of which Americans should get COVID-19 booster shots, with some members wondering if the decision should be put off for a month in hopes of more evidence.
The doubts and uncertainties suggested yet again that the matter of whether to dispense extra doses to shore up Americans’ protection against the coronavirus is more complicated scientifically than the Biden administration may have realized when it outlined plans a month ago for an across-the-board rollout of boosters. The rollout was supposed to have begun this week.
Much of the discussion at the meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices focused on the possibility of a scaled-back booster program targeted to older people or perhaps health care workers. But even then, some of the experts said that the data on whether boosters are actually needed, precisely who should get them and when was not clear-cut.
“What would be the downside” of simply waiting a month in hopes of more information? asked Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel University.
Read: Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan
The two-day meeting had been scheduled to resume on Thursday, but it was not immediately clear whether that would happen.
The meeting came days after a different advisory group — this one serving the Food and Drug Administration — overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping White House plan to dispense third shots to nearly everyone. Instead, that panel endorsed booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine only for senior citizens and those at high risk from the virus.
While the COVID-19 vaccines continue to offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, immunity against milder infection seems to be dropping months after vaccination.
“I want to highlight that in September of 2021 in the United States, deaths from COVID-19 are largely vaccine-preventable with the primary series of any of the three vaccines available,” said CDC advisory panel member Dr. Matthew Daley, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado.
And the public must understand that no matter how good a COVID-19 vaccine is, when it comes to milder infections, “it is unlikely that we will prevent everything,” said Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University.
Several panelists said another concern is the public confusion that could result if they recommend a booster only for certain recipients of the Pfizer vaccine. That could leave people vaccinated with Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots wondering what to do.
The meeting was devoted to Pfizer booster shots only. Moderna’s application to dispense third doses is not as far along in the process. And a major U.S. study on whether mixing-and-matching booster doses is safe and effective isn’t finished.
Read: US panel backs COVID-19 boosters only for seniors, high-risk
Many experts are torn about the need for boosters because they see the COVID-19 vaccines working as expected, even amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. It is normal for virus-blocking antibodies to be highest right after vaccination and then wane over the following months.
“We don’t care if antibodies wane. You care what is the minimum” needed for protection, Long said.
Yet no one knows the antibody level threshold below which someone’s risk for infection suddenly jumps. Even then, the body has backup defenses.
Antibody production and even those backup defenses don’t form as robustly in older people. But it’s impossible to pinpoint the age at which that becomes a problem, CDC microbiologist Natalie Thornburg told the committee.
Ultimately the committee must decide who is considered at high enough risk for an extra dose.
CDC officials presented data from several U.S. studies, saying there is growing evidence of a decline in the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in preventing new COVID-19 infections in some groups, most notably people 65 and older and health care workers who got shots early in the vaccination campaign.
There’s also a hint that at age 75, there may be some decline in protection against hospitalization. But the CDC said there is little information on waning immunity in younger people with chronic medical problems.
Some panelists also wondered about boosters for health care workers who can’t come to work if they get even a mild infection.
Read: Global vaccine disparity gets sharper amid talk of boosters
“We don’t have enough health care workers to take care of the unvaccinated. They just keep coming,” Talbot said.
Another question was how many months after the second shot the booster should be given. Scientists have talked about six months or eight months.
As for booster safety, serious side effects are exceedingly rare with the first two doses. And Pfizer pointed to 2.8 million booster doses given in Israel, mostly to people 60 and older, with fewer reports of annoying side effects like pain or fever with the third dose than with the earlier shots. There was one report of a rare risk, heart inflammation, that is sometimes seen in younger men.
In the U.S., more than 24,000 people who have volunteered for a CDC vaccine safety tracking system have reported getting an extra dose, and likewise have reported no red flags.
Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine works in kids ages 5 to 11
Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and that it will seek U.S. authorization for this age group soon — a key step toward beginning vaccinations for youngsters.
The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech already is available for anyone 12 and older. But with kids now back in school and the extra-contagious delta variant causing a huge jump in pediatric infections, many parents are anxiously awaiting vaccinations for their younger children.
For elementary school-aged kids, Pfizer tested a much lower dose — a third of the amount that’s in each shot given now. Yet after their second dose, children ages 5 to 11 developed coronavirus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as teenagers and young adults getting the regular-strength shots, Dr. Bill Gruber, a Pfizer senior vice president, told The Associated Press.
Read: US assures Covid cooperation to continue as 1-mn doses of Pfizer's vaccine received
The kid dosage also proved safe, with similar or fewer temporary side effects — such as sore arms, fever or achiness — that teens experience, he said.
“I think we really hit the sweet spot,” said Gruber, who’s also a pediatrician.
Gruber said the companies aim to apply to the Food and Drug Administration by the end of the month for emergency use in this age group, followed shortly afterward with applications to European and British regulators.
Earlier this month, FDA chief Dr. Peter Marks told the AP that once Pfizer turns over its study results, his agency would evaluate the data “hopefully in a matter of weeks” to decide if the shots are safe and effective enough for younger kids.
An outside expert said scientists want to see more details but called the report encouraging.
“These topline results are very good news,” said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief. The level of immune response Pfizer reported “appears likely to be protective.”
Read: US regulators give full approval to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
Many Western countries so far have vaccinated no younger than age 12, awaiting evidence of what’s the right dose and that it works safely. Cuba last week began immunizing children as young as 2 with its homegrown vaccines and Chinese regulators have cleared two of its brands down to age 3.
While kids are at lower risk of severe illness or death than older people, more than 5 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began and at least 460 have died, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Cases in children have risen as the delta variant swept through the country.
COVID has killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu
COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000.
The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time.
“Big pockets of American society — and, worse, their leaders — have thrown this away,” medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan said of the opportunity to vaccinate everyone eligible by now.
Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope it becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That could take time.
“We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could happen over a few years.
For now, the pandemic still has the United States and other parts of the world firmly in its jaws.
Read: Global Covid update: Vaccines put the brakes on pandemic's advance
While the delta-fueled surge in infections may have peaked, U.S. deaths are running at over 1,900 a day on average, the highest level since early March, and the country’s overall toll topped 675,000 Monday, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number is believed to be higher.
Winter may bring a new surge, with the University of Washington’s influential model projecting an additional 100,000 or so Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1, which would bring the overall U.S. toll to 776,000.
The 1918-19 influenza pandemic killed 50 million victims globally at a time when the world had one-quarter the population it does now. Global deaths from COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million.
The Spanish flu’s U.S. death toll is a rough guess, given the incomplete records of the era and the poor scientific understanding of what caused the illness. The 675,000 figure comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The ebbing of COVID-19 could happen if the virus progressively weakens as it mutates and more and more humans’ immune systems learn to attack it. Vaccination and surviving infection are the main ways the immune system improves. Breast-fed infants also gain some immunity from their mothers.
Under that optimistic scenario, schoolchildren would get mild illness that trains their immune systems. As they grow up, the children would carry the immune response memory, so that when they are old and vulnerable, the coronavirus would be no more dangerous than cold viruses.
The same goes for today’s vaccinated teens: Their immune systems would get stronger through the shots and mild infections.
“We will all get infected,” Antia predicted. “What’s important is whether the infections are severe.”
Something similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic. It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but immunity acquired through infection and vaccination has triumphed.
Read: US panel backs COVID-19 boosters only for seniors, high-risk
Getting an annual flu shot now protects against H1N1 and several other strains of flu. To be sure, flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans each year, but on average, it is a seasonal problem and a manageable one.
Before COVID-19, the 1918-19 flu was universally considered the worst pandemic disease in human history. Whether the current scourge ultimately proves deadlier is unclear.
In many ways, the 1918-19 flu — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received widespread news coverage in Spain — was worse.
Spread by the mobility of World War I, it killed young, healthy adults in vast numbers. No vaccine existed to slow it, and there were no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections. And, of course, the world was much smaller.
Yet jet travel and mass migrations threaten to increase the toll of the current pandemic. Much of the world is unvaccinated. And the coronavirus has been full of surprises.
Markel said he is continually astounded by the magnitude of the disruption the pandemic has brought to the planet.
“I was gobsmacked by the size of the quarantines” the Chinese government undertook initially, Markel said, “and I’ve since been gob-gob-gob-smacked to the nth degree.” The lagging pace of U.S. vaccinations is the latest source of his astonishment.
Just under 64% of the U.S. population has received as least one dose of the vaccine, with state rates ranging from a high of approximately 77% in Vermont and Massachusetts to lows around 46% to 49% in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and Mississippi.
Globally, about 43% of the population has received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data, with some African countries just beginning to give their first shots.
“We know that all pandemics come to an end,” said Dr. Jeremy Brown, director of emergency care research at the National Institutes of Health, who wrote a book on influenza. “They can do terrible things while they’re raging.”
COVID-19 could have been far less lethal in the U.S. if more people had gotten vaccinated faster, “and we still have an opportunity to turn it around,” Brown said. “We often lose sight of how lucky we are to take these things for granted.”
The current vaccines work extremely well in preventing severe disease and death from the variants of the virus that have emerged so far.
Read: Washington Post editorial on COVID-19 origins distorts facts: Chinese embassy
It will be crucial for scientists to make sure the ever-mutating virus hasn’t changed enough to evade vaccines or to cause severe illness in unvaccinated children, Antia said.
If the virus changes significantly, a new vaccine using the technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna shots could be produced in 110 days, a Pfizer executive said Wednesday. The company is studying whether annual shots with the current vaccine will be required to keep immunity high.
One plus: The coronavirus mutates at a slower pace than flu viruses, making it a more stable target for vaccination, said Ann Marie Kimball, a retired University of Washington professor of epidemiology.
So, will the current pandemic unseat the 1918-19 flu pandemic as the worst in human history?
“You’d like to say no. We have a lot more infection control, a lot more ability to support people who are sick. We have modern medicine,” Kimball said. “But we have a lot more people and a lot more mobility. ... The fear is eventually a new strain gets around a particular vaccine target.”
To those unvaccinated individuals who are counting on infection rather than vaccination for immune protection, Kimball said, “The trouble is, you have to survive infection to acquire the immunity.” It’s easier, she said, to go to the drugstore and get a shot.
Trailblazing tourist trip to orbit ends with splashdown
Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.
The all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut.
The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.
“Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.
Read:China astronauts return after 90 days aboard space station
“It was a heck of a ride for us ... just getting started,” replied trip sponsor Jared Isaacman, referring to the growing number of private flights on the horizon.
SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles (585 kilometers) after Wednesday night’s liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles (160 kilometers), the passengers savored views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule.
The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travelers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX’s two previous crew splashdowns — carrying astronauts for NASA — were in the Gulf of Mexico.
Within a few minutes, a pair of SpaceX boats pulled up alongside the bobbing capsule. When the capsule’s hatch was opened on the recovery ship, health care worker Hayley Arceneaux was the first one out, flashing a big smile and thumbs up.
All appeared well and happy.
Their families were waiting near the scene of Wednesday night’s launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
This time, NASA was little more than an encouraging bystander, its only tie being the Kennedy launch pad once used for the Apollo moonshots and shuttle crews, but now leased by SpaceX.
Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and accomplished pilot, aimed to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Donating $100 million himself, he held a lottery for one of the four seats. Late Saturday, Musk tweeted he was donating $50 million, putting them over the top.
For the last seat, Isaacman held a competition for clients of his Allentown, Pennsylvania payment-processing business, Shift4 Payments.
Read:SpaceX launches 4 amateurs on private Earth-circling trip
Joining him on the flight were Arceneaux, 29, a St. Jude physician assistant who was treated at the Memphis, Tennessee hospital nearly two decades ago for bone cancer, and contest winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator, scientist and artist from Tempe, Arizona.
“Best ride of my life!” Proctor tweeted a few hours after splashdown.
Strangers until March, the four spent six months training and preparing for potential emergencies during the flight — but there was no need to step in, officials said after their return. During the trip dubbed Inspiration4, they had time to chat with St. Jude patients, conduct medical tests on themselves, ring the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange and do some drawing and ukulele playing.
Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis, assured her patients, “I was a little girl going through cancer treatment just like a lot of you, and if I can do this, you can do this.”
They also took calls from Tom Cruise, interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station for filming, and the rock band U2′s Bono.
Even their space menu wasn’t typical: Cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb.
Before beginning descent, Sembroski was so calm that he was seen in the capsule watching the 1987 Mel Brooks’ film “Spaceballs” on his tablet.
“What an amazing adventure!” he tweeted.
Congratulations streamed in, including from the Association of Space Explorers to its four newest members.
Read:4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
Aside from trouble with a toilet fan and a bad temperature sensor in an engine, the flight went exceedingly well, officials said. Some of the four passengers experienced motion sickness when they reached orbit — just as some astronauts do.
“It was a very clean mission from start to finish,” said Benji Reed, a SpaceX senior director.
Reed anticipates as many as six private flights a year for SpaceX, sandwiched between astronaut launches for NASA. Four SpaceX flights are already booked to carry paying customers to the space station, accompanied by former NASA astronauts. The first is targeted for early next year with three businessmen paying $55 million apiece. Russia also plans to take up an actor and film director for filming next month and a Japanese tycoon in December.
Customers interested in quick space trips are turning to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The two rode their own rockets to the fringes of space in July to spur ticket sales; their flights lasted 10 to 15 minutes.
The 60-year scorecard now stands at 591 people who have reached space or its edges — and is expected to skyrocket as space tourism heats up.
High winds threaten to whip up flames approaching Lake Tahoe
A day after an explosive wildfire emptied a resort city at the southern tip of Lake Tahoe, a huge firefighting force braced for strong winds Tuesday as some residents in neighboring Nevada were ordered to evacuate.
The city of South Lake Tahoe, usually bustling with summer tourists, was eerily empty and the air thick and hazy with smoke from the Caldor Fire, one of two major fires burning in the same area. On Monday, roughly 22,000 residents jammed the city’s main artery for hours after they were ordered to leave as the fire advanced, chewing up drought-stricken vegetation.
The National Weather Service warned that weather conditions through Wednesday would include low humidity, dry fuel and wind gusts up to 30 mph (48 kph).
“That’s definitely not going to help the firefighting efforts,” said Courtney Coats, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service.
The fire was 3 miles (5 kilometers) outside of South Lake Tahoe, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Battalion Chief Henry Herrera told KGO-TV.
Read: Wildfire evacuees flood Lake Tahoe roads in rush to flee
South Lake Tahoe city officials said only a handful of residents defied Monday’s evacuation order. But nearly everyone worried Tuesday about what the fire would do next.
“It just kind of sucks waiting. I mean, I know it’s close down that way,” said Russ Crupi, gesturing south from his home in the Heavenly Valley Estates mobile home park, which he and his wife manage for a living. He had arranged sprinklers and tractors around the neighborhood.
“I’m worried about what’ll be here when people come back. People want to come back to their houses and that’s what I’m going to try to do,” he said.
Pushed by strong winds, the Caldor Fire crossed two major highways and burned mountain cabins as it swept down slopes into the Tahoe Basin. Thick smoke prevented air firefighting operations periodically last week. But since then, nearly two dozen helicopters and three air tankers dumped thousands of gallons of water and retardant on the fire, fire spokesman Dominic Polito said Tuesday.
The Lake Tahoe area is usually a year-round recreational paradise offering beaches, water sports, hiking, ski resorts and golfing. South Lake Tahoe bustles with outdoor activities while just across the state border in Stateline, Nevada tourists can gamble at major casinos.
But on Tuesday, only a few dozen tourists remained on the casino floor of the Montbleu Resort, Casino and Spa. The state board that controls gaming said that casino regulators were monitoring operations at the four largest gambling properties in the city.
Hotels are housing evacuees, fire crews and other emergency personnel. In all, Harrah’s, Harveys Lake Tahoe Casino, the Hard Rock and Montbleu Resort have more than 2,200 hotel rooms.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak urged residents to be prepared, saying there was no timeline for when evacuations might be ordered. At a news conference in Carson City, he noted that ash was falling on him even though the fire was about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away.
“I’m standing here and I’m getting all ash particulates on my jacket, even,” the governor said. “This is serious, folks.”
Hours later, residents in parts of Douglas County under an evacuation warning were ordered to leave, although casinos were excluded.
Read: Crews struggle to stop fire bearing down on Lake Tahoe
At the Douglas County Community & Senior Center in Gardnerville, people had their temperature checked before entering a gymnasium of cots set up by the Red Cross. Outside, evacuees who had stayed in tents sorted through ramen noodles and plastic bags of clothes and keepsakes.
South Lake Tahoe resident Lorie Major was at the grocery store when she got the alert on her phone.
“I had to tell myself: ’OK, Lorie: Get it together. It’s time to go,’” she said.
She put on headphones, turned on the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain” and walked home to an empty apartment complex already vacated by neighbors. She and her mini Australian shepherd, Koda, took a 20-mile (32-kilometer) taxi ride from her South Lake Tahoe apartment to a hotel in Minden, Nevada.
A firefighter injured while battling the Caldor Fire last weekend was expected to be hospitalized for a month after undergoing skin grafting surgery. Richard Gerety III of Patterson, California suffered third-degree burns over 20% of his body, the Modesto Bee reported. Despite the very active fire year, there have not been many injuries or deaths among firefighters or residents.
More than 15,000 firefighters were battling dozens of California blazes, with help from out of state crews. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive, scientists say.
The threat of fire is so widespread that the U.S. Forest Service announced Monday that all national forests in California would be closed until Sept. 17.
Crews are battling the Dixie, the second-largest wildfire in state history at 1,260 square miles (3,267 square kilometers). The weeks-old fire was burning about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Lake Tahoe-area blaze and prompting new evacuation orders and warnings this week.
The Caldor Fire has scorched nearly 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) since breaking out Aug. 14. After the weekend’s fierce burning, containment dropped from 19% to 16%.
More than 600 structures have been destroyed, and at least 33,000 more were threatened.
Read: Pristine Lake Tahoe shrouded in smoke from threatening fire
The last two wildfires that ripped through populated areas near Tahoe were the Angora Fire that destroyed more than 200 homes in 2007 and the Gondola Fire in 2002 that ignited near a chairlift at Heavenly Mountain Resort.
At the evacuation center in Gardnerville, Joe Gillespie said he, his girlfriend and her son left their home in Meyers south of South Lake Tahoe on Sunday, bringing clothes, picture frames and collectibles like Hot Wheels toys from the 1960s that Gillespie’s mother gave him.
Gillespie, a mechanic at Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort, said that unlike the northern shore of Lake Tahoe, which is dotted with mansions and second homes, the area currently under threat houses blue-collar workers who make their living at the casinos and ski resorts that make the area so popular.
The Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort is beloved for its unpretentious and comparatively affordable winter prices. It turns 75 this year, he said.
“It sounds like we won’t be opening because of the fire,” he said.
Wuhan lab leak theory more about politics than science: The Guardian
The Wuhan lab leak theory is more about politics than science, The Guardian newspaper reported Sunday.
Whatever this week's Biden review on the virus's origins finds, the cause of the pandemic lies in the destruction of animal habitats. As for the "lab leak" theory of the disease, scientists refuted the idea in the paper.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, made clear in his recent book that he changed his mind after intense consultations with other researchers, though initially he believed that COVID-19 escaped from a virus research centre, said an article in the paper.
READ: What the WHO coronavirus experts learned in Wuhan
"As things currently stand, the evidence strongly suggests that COVID-19 arose after a natural spillover event," Farrar was quoted as saying.
Farrar's point is backed by Professor James Wood, of Cambridge University.
"I think there is very strong evidence for this being caused by natural spillovers but that argument simply does not suit some political groups. They promote the idea that COVID-19 was caused by a lab leak because such a claim deflects attention from increasing evidence that indicates biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildlife trade - which increase the dangers of natural spillovers - are the real dangers that we face from pandemics," said Wood.
READ: WHO expert skeptical coronavirus leaked from controversial Wuhan lab
Fossil leaves may reveal climate in last era of dinosaurs
Richard Barclay opens a metal drawer in archives of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum containing fossils that are nearly 100 million years old. Despite their age, these rocks aren’t fragile. The geologist and botanist handles them with casual ease, placing one in his palm for closer examination.
Embedded in the ancient rock is a triangular leaf with rounded upper lobes. This leaf fell off a tree around the time that T-rex and triceratops roamed prehistoric forests, but the plant is instantly recognizable. “You can tell this is ginkgo, it’s a unique shape,” said Barclay. “It hasn’t changed much in many millions of years.”
What’s also special about ginkgo trees is that their fossils often preserve actual plant material, not simply a leaf’s impression. And that thin sheet of organic matter may be key to understanding the ancient climate system — and the possible future of our warming planet.
But Barclay and his team first need to crack the plant’s code to read information contained in the ancient leaf.
Read: China dinosaur footprint fossil named after Doraemon's "Nobita"
“Ginkgo is a pretty unique time capsule,” said Peter Crane, a Yale University paleobotanist. As he wrote in “Ginkgo,” his book on the plant, “It is hard to imagine that these trees, now towering above cars and commuters, grew up with the dinosaurs and have come down to us almost unchanged for 200 million years.”
If a tree fell in an ancient forest, what can it tell scientists today?
“The reason scientists look back in the past is to understand what’s coming in the future,” said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona. “We want to understand how the planet has responded in the past to large-scale changes in climate — how ecosystems changed, how ocean chemistry and sea levels changed, how forests worked.”
Of particular interest to scientists are “ hothouse ” periods when they believe carbon levels and temperatures were significantly higher than today. One such time occurred during the late Cretaceous period (66 million to 100 million years ago), the last era of the dinosaurs before a meteor slammed into Earth and most species went extinct.
Learning more about hothouse climates also gives scientists valuable data to test the accuracy of climate models for projecting the future, says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University.
But climate information about the distant past is limited. Air bubbles trapped in ancient ice cores allow scientists to study ancient carbon dioxide levels, but those only go back about 800,000 years.
That’s where the Smithsonian’s collection of ginkgo leaves come in. Down a warren of corridors, Barclay hops across millennia – as is only possible in a museum – to the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution had started changing the climate.
From a cabinet, he withdraws sheets of paper where Victorian-era scientists taped and tied ginkgo leaves plucked from botanical gardens of their time. Many specimens have labels written in beautiful cursive, including one dated Aug. 22, 1896.
Read:120,000-year-old fossils in Israel link to human family tree
The leaf shape is virtually identical to the fossil from around 100 million years ago, and to a modern leaf Barclay holds in his hand. But one key difference can be viewed with a microscope — how the leaf has responded to changing carbon in the air.
Tiny pores on a leaf’s underside are arranged to take in carbon dioxide and respire water, allowing the plant to transform sunlight into energy. When there’s a lot of carbon in the air, the plant needs fewer pores to absorb the carbon it needs. When carbon levels drop, the leaves produce more pores to compensate.
Today, scientists know the global average level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 410 parts per million – and Barclay knows what that makes the leaf look like. Thanks to the Victorian botanical sheets, he knows what ginkgo leaves looked like before humans had significantly transformed the planet’s atmosphere.
Now he wants to know what pores in the fossilized ginkgo leaves can tell him about the atmosphere 100 million years ago.
But first he needs a codebreaker, a translation sheet — sort of a Rosetta stone to decipher the handwriting of the ancient atmosphere.
That’s why he’s running an experiment in a forest clearing in Maryland.
One morning earlier this year, Barclay and project assistant Ben Lloyd tended rows of ginkgo trees within open-topped enclosures of plastic sheeting that expose them to rain, sunlight and changing seasons. “We are growing them this way so the plants experience natural cycles,” Barclay said.
The researchers adjust the carbon dioxide pumped into each chamber, and an electronic monitor outside flashes the levels every five seconds.
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Some trees are growing at current carbon dioxide levels. Others are growing at significantly elevated levels, approximating levels in the distant past, or perhaps the future.
“We’re looking for analogues — we need something to compare with,” said Barclay. If there’s a match between what the leaves in the experiment look like and what the fossil leaves look like, that will give researchers a rough guide to the ancient atmosphere.
They also are studying what happens when trees grow in super-charged environments, and they found that more carbon dioxide makes them grow faster.
But adds Barclay, “If plants grow very quickly, they are more likely to make mistakes and be more susceptible to damage. ... It’s like a race car driver that’s more likely to go off the rails at high speeds.”
Fires harming California’s efforts to curb climate change
Record-setting blazes raging across Northern California are wiping out forests central to plans to reduce carbon emissions and testing projects designed to protect communities, the state’s top fire official said Wednesday, hours before a fast-moving new blaze erupted.
Fires that are “exceedingly resistant to control” in drought-sapped vegetation are on pace to exceed the amount of land burned last year — the most in modern history — and having broader effects, said Thom Porter, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Hours after Porter spoke, a grass fire spurred by winds up to 30 mph (48 kilometers per hour) swiftly burned dozens of homes, forced the evacuation of schools and threatened the city of Clearlake about 80 miles north of San Francisco.
Rows of homes were destroyed on at least two blocks and television footage showed crews dousing burning homes with water. Children were rushed out of an elementary school as a field across the street burned.
Read: Fueled by winds, largest wildfire moves near California city
Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin issued a warning of “immediate threat to life and property.”
“This isn’t the fire to mess around with,” he told KGO-TV.
Fires burning mostly in the northern part of the state threatened thousands of homes and led to extended evacuation orders and warnings, as well as power outages to prevent utility equipment from sparking fires amid strong winds.
The largest current fire in the West, known as the Dixie Fire, is the first to have burned from east to west across the spine of California, where the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains meet, the state’s fire chief said.
It was also one of several massive fires that have destroyed areas of the timber belt that serve as a centerpiece of the state’s climate reduction plan because trees can store carbon dioxide.
“We are seeing generational destruction of forests because of what these fires are doing,” Porter said. “This is going to take a long time to come back from.”
Although the Dixie Fire is only a third contained and remains a threat, dozens of fire engines and crews were transferred Wednesday to fight the Caldor Fire, which exploded in size southwest of Lake Tahoe and ravaged Grizzly Flats, a community of about 1,200. It covered 84 square miles (217 square kilometers).
Dozens of homes burned, according to officials, but tallies were incomplete. Those who viewed the aftermath saw few homes standing. Lone chimneys rose from the ashes, little more than rows of chairs remained of a church and the burned out husks of cars littered the landscape.
Chris Sheean said the dream home he bought six weeks ago near the elementary school went up in smoke. He felt lucky he and his wife, cats and dog got out safely hours before the flames arrived.
“It’s devastation. You know, there’s really no way to explain the feeling, the loss,” Sheean said. “Maybe next to losing a child, a baby, maybe. … Everything that we owned, everything that we’ve built is gone.”
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All 7,000 residents in nearby Pollock Pines were ordered to evacuate Tuesday. A large fire menaced the town in 2014.
Time lapse video from a U.S. Forest Service webcam captured the fire’s extreme behavior as it grew beneath a massive gray cloud. A ceiling of dark smoke spread out from the main plume that began to glow and was then illuminated by flames shooting hundreds of feet in the sky.
John Battles, a professor of forest ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, said the fires are behaving in ways not seen in the past as flames churn through trees and brush desiccated by a megadrought in the West and exacerbated by climate change.
“These are reburning areas that have burned what we thought were big fires 10 years ago,” Battles said. “They’re reburning that landscape.”
The wildfires, in large part, have been fueled by high temperatures, strong winds and dry weather. Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Battles said the fires have created a vicious cycle. Burning increases carbon emissions while also destroying trees and other ground cover that can absorb the greenhouse gas. Dead trees will continue to release carbon they once stored.
The fire is burning along the U.S. Route 50 corridor, one of two highways between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. The highway through the canyon along the South Fork of the American River has been the focus of a decades-long effort to protect homes by preventing the spread of fires through a combination of fuel breaks, prescribed burns and logging.
“All of that is being tested as we speak,” Porter said. “When fire is jumping outside of its perimeter, sometimes miles ... those fuel projects won’t stop a fire. Sometimes they’re just used to slow it enough to get people out of the way.”
In the Sierra-Cascades region about 100 miles (161 kilometers) to the north, the month-old Dixie Fire expanded by thousands of acres to 993 square miles (2,572 square kilometers) — two weeks after the blaze gutted the Gold Rush-era town of Greenville. About 16,000 homes and buildings were threatened by the Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
“It’s a pretty good size monster,” Mark Brunton, a firefighting operations section chief, said in a briefing. “It’s going to be a work in progress — eating the elephant one bite at a time kind of thing.”
The Caldor and Dixie fires are among a dozen large wildfires in the northern half of California.
More than 40,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers had no power, though the utility began restoring electricity to customers as forecasts for low humidity and gusts were expected to improve Thursday.
Most of the fires this year have hit the northern part of the state, largely sparing Southern California, which experienced rare drizzle and light rain Wednesday. Fire conditions in the region are expected to get worse in the fall.
What do we know about booster shots for COVID-19?
U.S. health officials may soon recommend COVID-19 booster shots for fully vaccinated Americans. A look at what we know about boosters and how they could help fight the coronavirus:
WHY MIGHT WE NEED BOOSTERS?
It’s common for protection from vaccines to decrease over time. A tetanus booster, for example, is recommended every 10 years.
Read: US okays Covid booster dose for those with weak immune systems
Researchers and health officials have been monitoring the real-world performance of the COVID-19 vaccines to see how long protection lasts among vaccinated people. The vaccines authorized in the U.S. continue to offer very strong protection against severe disease and death.
But laboratory blood tests have suggested that antibodies — one of the immune system’s layers of protection — can wane over time. That doesn’t mean protection disappears, but it could mean protection is not as strong or that it could take longer for the body to fight back against an infection.
The delta variant has complicated the question of when to give boosters because it is so much more contagious and much of the data gathered about vaccine performance is from before the delta variant was widely circulating. Delta is taking off at the same time that vaccine immunity might also be waning for the first people vaccinated.
Israel is offering a booster to people over 50 who were vaccinated more than five months ago. France and Germany plan to offer boosters to some people in the fall. The European Medicines Agency said it too is reviewing data to see if booster shots are needed.
WHEN WOULD THEY BE GIVEN?
It depends on when you got your initial shots. One possibility is that health officials will recommend people get a booster roughly eight months after getting their second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Officials are continuing to collect information about the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was authorized for use in the U.S. in late February, to determine when to recommend boosters.
Read:US to recommend COVID vaccine boosters at 8 months
WHO WOULD GET THEM?
The first people vaccinated in the United States would likely be first in line for boosters too. That means health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans, who were the first to be vaccinated once the shots were authorized last December.
BOOSTER? THIRD SHOT? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Transplant recipients and other people with weakened immune systems may not have gotten enough protection from vaccines to begin with. They can now receive a third dose at least 28 days after their second shot as part of their initial series of shots needed for them to be fully vaccinated. For those with normal immune systems, boosters are given much later after full vaccination — not to establish protection, but to rev it up again.
WHAT QUESTIONS REMAIN?
Still unknown is whether people should get the same type of shot they got when first vaccinated. And the nation’s top health advisers will be looking for evidence about the safety of boosters and how well they protect against infection and severe disease.
Read:Why might COVID-19 vaccine boosters be necessary?
Global access to vaccines is also important to stem the pandemic and prevent the emergence of new variants. Booster shots could crimp already tight global vaccine supplies.
WHAT ABOUT THE UNVACCINATED?
Dr. Melanie Swift, who has been leading the vaccination program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says getting more shots into people who haven’t yet been vaccinated at all is “our best tool, not only to prevent hospitalization and mortality from the delta variant, but to stop transmission.” Every infection, she says, “gives the virus more chances to mutate into who knows what the next variant could be.”
“People who took the vaccine the first time are likely to line up and get their booster,” Swift says. “But it’s not going to achieve our goals overall if all their unvaccinated neighbors are not vaccinated.”