By Aly Kamadia, Editor-In-Chief, iDose

*The following article is for educational purposes only. It should not be seen as a substitute for professional medical advice

At the current moment, people in a number of countries are getting vaccinated at a pretty quick rate. But we keep hearing about Covid-19 ‘variants’. Do vaccines protect against these variants?

There are a number of variants that are raising alarm bells. It appears that at least some of these variants are spreading with greater efficiency and may be causing increased hospitalizations and deaths.

The question of precisely how effective current vaccines are against these variants is an open one.

For instance, a virologist and vaccinologist, Dr. Paulo Verardi, states that, “researchers are intensely investigating whether there will be reduced vaccine efficacy against” certain variants.

That seems to be an accurate reading of the situation. Furthermore, I would encourage anyone interested in the topic of variants to read Dr. Verardi’s article that we feature this month.

Now that a large number of people are getting vaccinated, is the end of the pandemic in sight?

I’m of the general opinion that human nature craves a significant sense of certainty. I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that a notable amount of people believe that the end of the pandemic will arrive very soon. Nor would it be shocking to hear that many have held this view since the pandemic started.  

And to be clear, there are reasons for optimism.

After all, given intensive research efforts, we were able to discover a variety of vaccines relatively quickly, which is central in our efforts to fight the pandemic.

On the flip side, there are serious concerns about how quick poor countries can get their populations vaccinated. If rich countries don’t take this issue seriously, as is the current case, slower worldwide vaccinations will increase the risk of future variants and mutations, which very well may come back to haunt them.

Moreover, to be candid, I think it’s an astounding act of cruelty for drug companies to virtually say, ‘we own the intellectual property to vaccines, and we’re not releasing the knowledge of how to manufacture them unless we are paid substantial sums of money for the dosages administered’.

The idea that the knowledge to cure someone, say from a fatal disease, can be legally designated as “property” is a topic that I think deserves much more intellectual scrutiny than it has received.

One economist who has offered tons of serious commentary on this issue is Dean Baker. This month, his article offers some great insight on how the world should approach the pandemic.

The idea that the knowledge to cure someone, say from a fatal disease, can be legally designated as “property” is a topic that I think deserves much more intellectual scrutiny than it has received.

When the pandemic began, why did so few people initially believe it would last this long?

There are many reasons for peoples overly optimistic views – which I always sympathized with, even though they had no basis in reality and were fundamentally ahistorical.

In late March 2020, I explicitly stated that tens of millions of people in North America could be infected. The evidence was clear. Nevertheless, a good number of people thought that such estimates were crazy.

Well, as it turns out, the total number of cases in the US has exceeded 30 million.

I should also note that as early as April 2020, long before the general public had heard about the possibility of future ‘waves’, I felt a strong responsibility to educate iDose readers on these matters.

That’s why, as an example, I interviewed two distinguished historians (Dr. Susan Kingsley Kent and Dr. Christian W. McMillen) about the lessons we might learn from the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic – one of which included potential deadly ‘waves’.

It’s also why, as editor, I’ve published all sorts of analysis and commentary authored by highly credible people.

What is one of the main lessons you have learned during this past year, as the pandemic has ravaged the world?

Before the pandemic, I was of the opinion that far too many leaders in the world were incompetent airheads, had egos larger than the size of the universe, lacked a shred of civic duty and suffered from a downright pathological need for money and power.

In retrospect, I admit that my opinions were wrong.

My assessment was far too charitable.

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Aly Kamadia is Editor-In-Chief of iDose. To read selected articles by Kamadia, click here.