Category: Labor and Working

Do Your Vaccine Side Effects Predict How You’d React To COVID-19?

Do Your Vaccine Side Effects Predict How You’d React To COVID-19?

Seraphina Seow, On Assignment For HuffPost             
People have had varying reactions to the COVID-19 shot, which experts say is normal. (Photo: aquaArts studio via Getty Images)
People have had varying reactions to the COVID-19 shot, which experts say is normal. (Photo: aquaArts studio via Getty Images)

 

We’re more familiar now with the possible side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine interacting with our immune system. Experts stress post-shot issues like fatigue and fever mean the vaccine is working (as long as they aren’t indicative of an allergic reaction).

So, what does this mean for those of us who have no side effects?

We asked vaccine experts to give us the rundown on what side effects mean and whether their severity predicts how effective your immune response will be to the COVID-19 virus.

First, a recap on what causes COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

COVID-19 vaccine side effects are either a physical manifestation of your body’s immune response ― which is the case for most people ― or an allergic reaction, said Jesse Erasmus, acting assistant professor in the department of microbiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Erasmus said the side effects you have from a shot typically depend on the type of vaccine technology that’s used to create the immunization (for example, messenger RNA, or mRNA, is the type of technology the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots use) and how those components interact with your immune system.

In terms of the coronavirus shots, “all the vaccines that are currently in emergency use authorization have very similar side effect profiles,” said Colleen Kelley, an associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and principal investigator for Moderna and Novavax Phase 3 vaccine clinical trials at the Ponce de Leon Center clinical research site in Atlanta.

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Kelley thinks the COVID-19 shot side effects mainly stem from the body responding to the spike protein the vaccine introduces to the immune system, which helps it recognize (and then fight off) the spike protein on the coronavirus should it enter the body.

When it comes to allergic reactions to the vaccine, which are rare, a hypothesis for mRNA vaccines is that people may be allergic to a component called polyethylene glycol, a common food additive, Erasmus said.

Why do some people have worse side effects than others?

Based on people’s experiences, it appears that some have worse reactions to the shot than others. But scientifically there aren’t any confirmed reasons for this yet.

“There aren’t really any distinguishing factors that would predispose one individual having more side effects versus the other,” said Richard Dang, a pharmacist and assistant professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Southern California. “The only thing we’ve seen in the clinical data so far is that younger individuals seem to experience side effects at higher rates than older individuals, and we see that in the real world as well.”

There have been reported cases in which those who previously had the virus endured harsher side effects after they received their vaccines.

“Anecdotally, it does appear that people who may have had COVID-19 before their vaccine do tend to have those longer duration of symptoms,” Kelley added. “But we’re still gathering additional scientific data to really support this.”

Does the severity of side effects have anything to do with how well your body will fight COVID-19 if exposed?

Though it is a valid question, more studies need to be conducted to unpack what the severity of side effects actually mean, said Anna Wald, an infectious diseases physician and researcher in COVID-19 vaccine trials at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.

But Erasmus, Kelley and Wald all say the effectiveness of the vaccine is unlikely to be determined by how severe your side effects are.

“Remember that most people have mild or no side effects in the clinical trials [for the mRNA vaccines], and yet the vaccine was still found to have 95% effectiveness at protecting them from illness,” Wald noted.

Make sure to rest and take fever reducers if your COVID-19 vaccine side effects are bothering you. (Photo: Westend61 via Getty Images)
Make sure to rest and take fever reducers if your COVID-19 vaccine side effects are bothering you. (Photo: Westend61 via Getty Images)
Whether you develop mild or severe side effects, it’s important to know what to do.

Bottom line, the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the side effects. Getting the shot means protecting yourself against severe disease, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

If you do encounter side effects, there are a few things you can do. At the time of the vaccination, ask the person vaccinating you who best to contact (and how) for follow-up care should you need it, Dang said. You should also wait 15 to 30 minutes at the vaccine site after you receive the shot to make sure you don’t have any severe allergic reactions.

Usually, if you’re experiencing the immune system-related side effects, like fatigue, headache or fever, Kelley said, you can take a pain or fever reducer, such as Tylenol, then take a nap if you’re able. Make sure to stay hydrated and take it easy when you’re feeling off as well.

These issues will likely resolve in one to four days at the most, Kelley said. Anything lasting longer warrants a check-in with your doctor or at the place where you received your vaccine. You should seek emergency care or call 911 if you’re having difficulty breathing or significant swelling.

You can also register and report some of your side effects on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s V-safe program, Dang said. V-safe sends you daily, then weekly, text messages to see how you’re doing and if you’re experiencing any reactions. If you report severe reactions, it flags the CDC to check up on you further.

Remember that side effects are typically a very normal part of getting the COVID-19 vaccine ― and we’ll be in a lot better place on the other side of the shots.

Experts are still learning about COVID-19. The information in this story is what was known or available as of publication, but guidance can change as scientists discover more about the virus. Please check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most updated recommendations.

Matt Damon: Climate change will most impact ‘the poorest people’

Yahoo – Finance

 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday called climate change a “crisis multiplier” that will exacerbate “droughts and flooding” and spur global migration, as the military alliance announced efforts to incorporate climate change mitigation into its mission.

In a new interview, Oscar-winning actor and water equity philanthropist Matt Damon said the link between climate change and water scarcity will deepen over the coming years and predominantly impact the world’s most impoverished communities.

When asked about the connection between climate change and water scarcity, Damon pointed to low-income people in developing countries. Currently, 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water.

“Those are the people that we’re dealing with, those are the people that we’re trying to reach, and those are the people who are going to feel the effects of [climate change] more than anybody,” says Damon, who co-founded the nonprofit organization Water.org in 2009 and WaterEquity in 2017.

“It’s always going to fall to the poorest people on Earth to bear the brunt of these things more than anybody,” he adds. “That’s the connection.”

Climate observers expect water scarcity to worsen significantly over the coming decades. In the early to mid-2010s, 1.9 billion people, or 27% of the global population, lived in areas at risk of a severe water shortage, according to a United Nations report released last year. By 2050, that figure will increase to somewhere between 2.7 billion and 3.2 billion people.

“Water is the primary medium through which we will feel the effects of climate change,” The United Nations says on its website.

‘You’ve got to move to where the water is’

Water scarcity will also exacerbate global food insecurity, which last year worsened severely and caused “unprecedented” migration, the United Nations said in November. That trend will continue in the coming years as drought diminishes arable land and reduces crop yields, according to a report released two years ago by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Influencers with Andy Serwer: Matt Damon & Gary White

On an all new episode of Influencers, Andy Serwer sits down with Water.org co-founder and actor Matt Damon as well as Water.org co-founder Gary White to discuss World Water Day and the ongoing global water crisis.

“As we look at water stress, as we look at climate change, a lot of those people are going to be driven into poverty because of the tenuous access that they have to water now,” says Gary White, CEO and co-founder of both Water.org and WaterEquity.

“If you are not able to get water because of a drought that’s caused by climate change, you’ve got to move,” he adds. “You’ve got to move to where the water is.”

Damon and White spoke to Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an episode of “Influencers with Andy Serwer,” a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.

Damon kicked off his water philanthropy with the launch of H2O Africa in 2006, while working on a documentary called “Running the Sahara,” which profiled three men who attempted to traverse the Sahara Desert.

At a Clinton Global Initiative meeting two years later, Damon met White, who nearly two decades earlier had founded WaterPartners International, an organization that sought to alleviate the water crisis in Latin America, Barron’s reported. The two began to discuss the possibility of a partnership and founded Water.org a year later.

Actor Matt Damon speaks with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer on
Actor Matt Damon speaks with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer on “Influencers with Andy Serwer.”

 

Global climate migration is already underway and will increase dramatically over the rest of this century, according to an investigation released last year by The New York Times. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, more than 140 million people will move within their countries’ borders due to climate change by 2050, the World Bank found.

Speaking with Yahoo Finance, White said that water scarcity plays a central role in migration that observers ultimately attribute to climate change.

“Water is the root of so much of what needs to happen for people to maintain their income and their lifestyle and their home,” White says.

“When we talk about climate refugees, we are talking about water refugees, most of the time,” he adds.

John Oliver Takes on the Plastics Industry

EcoWatch – Plastics

John Oliver Takes on the Plastics Industry

Olivia Rosane                        March 23, 2021

 

John Oliver Takes on the Plastics Industry
John Oliver attends NRDC’s “Night of Comedy” Benefit on April 30, 2019 in New York City. Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images for NRDC.

 

In his latest deep dive for Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver took on plastic pollution and, specifically, the myth that if we all just recycled enough, the problem would go away.

Instead, Oliver argued, this is a narrative that has been intentionally pushed by the plastics industry for decades. He cited the ionic 1970 Keep America Beautiful ad, which showed a Native American man (really an Italian American actor) crying as a hand tossed litter from a car window. Keep America Beautiful, Oliver pointed out, was partly funded by plastics-industry trade group SPI.

“Which might seem odd until you realize that the underlying message there is, ‘It’s up to you, the consumer, to stop pollution,'” Oliver said. “And that has been a major through line in the recycling movement, a movement often bankrolled by companies that wanted to drill home the message that it is your responsibility to deal with the environmental impact of their products.”

Oliver pointed out several problems with contemporary recycling programs. He cited the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) statistic that only 8.7 percent of the plastics produced in the U.S. are actually recycled, and investigated why this is.

For one thing, most municipalities do not actually have the capacity to recycle most of the numbers inside the “chasing arrows” symbols on the back of plastic packaging. Numbers 1 and 2, representing PETE and HDPE, are more commonly recycled, but that leaves numbers 3 through 7, which include things like plastic bags and cups. We have the capacity to recycle less than five percent of these, Oliver said.

“Out of the seven numbers, only two are really much good, and that is a pretty bad ratio for a group of seven,” Oliver said.

In fact, it is cheaper for companies to produce virgin plastics than to recycle existing ones. Despite this, they have lobbied for the “chasing arrows” symbols to appear on their products, as well as for the existence of curbside recycling programs.

If anything needs to change in consumer behavior, it is in our willingness to believe this myth.

“Lies go down easier when you want them to be true,” Oliver said.

He even showed a clip of a recycling plant director who coined a new term for the consumer habit of putting non-recyclable items in the recycling bin: wish-cycling.

“Here’s an umbrella,” Martin Borque, the director, said, lifting the item out of the materials he had to sort. “I wish it was recyclable. It’s not.”

Removing these items causes extra work for recycling plants, and can even end up contaminating plastics that could otherwise be recycled and reused.

Oliver said that consumers shouldn’t stop recycling, though they should be sure to only blue-bin items their local plant can actually process. However, the major change needs to come from industry and policy, he said.

He spoke out in favor of Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, which puts the burden of dealing with waste back on the company that makes it. The U.S. is one of the only wealthy countries without an EPR law on the books, though legislators have been trying to change that with the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, which was introduced last year and is set to be introduced again in 2021.

“The real behavior change has to come from plastics manufacturers themselves,” Oliver concluded. “Without that, nothing significant is going to happen.”

Oliver’s segment won approval from activists working to pass EPR legislation in the U.S. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group thanked the TV host on Twitter for calling attention to the issue.

“Makers of single-use plastics shouldn’t escape the costs to our planet and public health,” the group wrote.

Experts Urge World Leaders to ‘Put Marine Ecosystems at the Heart of Climate Policy’

DeSmog

Experts Urge World Leaders to ‘Put Marine Ecosystems at the Heart of Climate Policy’

By Guest                                 March 22, 2021 

 

Ocean reef
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams 

 

As global weather experts warned Monday that the world’s oceans are “under threat like never before,” more than 3,000 scientists, politicians, and other public figures had endorsed an open letter urging national governments to “recognize the critical importance of our ocean and blue carbon in the fight against the climate emergency.”

Led by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and backed by 66 partner groups, the letter (pdf) calling on world leaders to “put marine ecosystems at the heart of climate policy” is now open to public signature and will be presented to governments before November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.

“Nature-based solutions like restoration and protection of marine habitats will both help us meet global de-carbonization goals and prevent the worst impacts of global heating while also protecting the lives and livelihoods of the three billion people who depend on marine biodiversity around the world,” said Steve Trent, executive director of the London-based EJF. “Our political leaders must recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and take truly bold, transformative action to reach a global zero carbon economy.”

“Our ocean gives us ​every second breath​. It absorbs around a third of the CO2 we pump out, and has taken in over a ​nuclear bomb’s worth​ of ​heat​ every second for the past 150 years,” the letter says. “It underpins our climate system and keeps our planet habitable: It is the ​blue beating heart of our planet.”

“Yet, when it comes to inclusion in climate policies, marine habitats are often neglected. ​​A healthy ocean, teeming with life, is a vital tool in the bid to tackle global heating: more than half of biological carbon capture​ is stored by marine wildlife,” the groups note, highlighting the power of mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and the wildlife of the open sea.

“The COP26 climate talks and COP15 biodiversity talks this year will be the most important meetings for generations. They will set us on the road to either a sustainable future for humanity or conflict, suffering, and mass extinctions,” the letter continues, urging world leaders to take three specific actions:

  • Include specific, legally binding targets to protect and restore blue carbon environments in their updated Nationally Determined Contribution implementation plans;
  • Commit to the 30×30 ocean protection plan and designate 30% of the ocean as ecologically representative​ marine protected areas by 2030; and
  • Agree an international moratorium on deep sea mining to protect the deep sea from irreversible, large-scale harm.

The letter comes about a month after a U.N. report warned that Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) pledges—or plans to reduce planet-heating emissions—that parties to the Paris climate agreement have unveiled so far ahead of COP26 are dramatically inadequate on the whole. As Common Dreams reported, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the findings “a red alert for our planet.”

Letter signatory Richard Unsworth, a marine scientist and co-founder of Project Seagrass, said Monday that “there is real hope: protection and restoration of habitats like seagrass meadows can be a key part of the solution in tackling climate change. But the missing piece has been the fundamental long-term support from the government.”

“If we’re going to fight climate change and face up to the associated problems of food security,” he said, “then we need to restore our oceans, and that involves real government support as part of a genuine green deal for the environment.”

Other signatories include including Pavel Kabat, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports lead author and inaugural research director of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO); human rights barrister Baroness Helena Kennedy; University of Exeter marine conservation professor Brendan Godley; wildlife filmmaker Gordon Buchanan; actor Joanna Lumley; and politicians from the United Kingdom, Germany, Indonesia, Taiwan, and beyond.

British Green MP Caroline Lucas emphasized that policies and action reflecting the importance of marine ecosystems “to both people and planet” must be “additional to—and not instead of—decarbonization on land.”

Echoing recent messages from fellow youth climate campaigners across the globe, 13-year-old Finlay Pringle, another signatory, said that “talking and doing nothing is not acceptable anymore. We don’t want more empty promises from our politicians, we need them to face the climate emergency and take action now, rather than continuing to pass the responsibility on to future generations.”

The letter was released as the WMO prepared for World Meteorological Day, which on Tuesday will celebrate “the ocean, our climate, and weather” while raising awareness about scientific findings regarding growing threats, including a landmark IPCC report on the world’s seas and frozen regions.

“Ocean heat is at record levels because of greenhouse gas emissions, and ocean acidification continues unabated. The impact of this will be felt for hundreds of years because the ocean has a long memory,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement Monday. “Ice is melting, with profound repercussions for the rest of the globe, through changing weather patterns and accelerating sea level rise.”

“In 2020, the annual Arctic sea ice minimum was among the lowest on record, exposing Polar communities to abnormal coastal flooding, and stakeholders such as shipping and fisheries, to sea ice hazards,” he added, also noting that “warm ocean temperatures helped fuel a record Atlantic hurricane season, and intense tropical cyclones in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.”

This article originally appeared on Common Dreams. It has been republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

John Oliver Shares Horrific Truths About Recycling Plastics

John Oliver Shares Horrific Truths About Recycling Plastics

M. Arbeiter                          March 22, 2021

 

John Oliver. Purveyor of laughs, purveyor of doom. By now, you likely know the drill when you tune into Last Week Tonight. You’ll get some pretty horrifying information about a facet of our society you maybe haven’t paid too much attention to. But you’ll also get a few dozen jokes about funny-looking animals! So you take your medicine with a spoonful of sugar. This week’s episode, concerning the recyclability (or lack thereof) of plastics, provides all of the above.

We learn about the deeply convoluted nature of the recycling institution. John touches on how so few plastics are actually recycled. As you’ll learn in the above video, such a small percentage of plastic products are recycle-friendly. And that’s before the concern of recyclable plastics becoming contaminated or just tossed out. And that’s not even factoring how many of those recyclable plastics end up recycling into non-recyclable plastics. I told you it was convoluted!

Another interesting piece of John’s latest lesson involves the marketing of recycling. The video highlights how major corporations have long put the onus on the consumer alone to “save the environment.” Meanwhile, with so many non-recyclable plastics in production, it’s practically out of the everyday person’s hands to manage this issue whatsoever.

A man roots through a landfill.
A man roots through a landfill. HBO

 

Of course, John closes out the segment with encouragement to keep recycling, albeit more mindfully. Following this, an appropriate castigation of the major corporations producing plastics; they’re the ones that need to change behavior in order to get the planet into better shape.

Some harrowing statistics in this video really drive this point home. Half the plastics ever produced have come into being since 2005; additionally, so much plastic litters the ocean, that by 2050, the mass of plastic should outnumber the mass of fish.

Yeah, harrowing! But John Oliver tosses in a talking blobfish and a demonic goat-man to make it all a bit more palatable.

John Oliver stares at a man wearing a goat head mask.
John Oliver stares at a man wearing a goat head mask.

Footage Of Australia’s Massive Mouse Plague Will Haunt Your Nightmares

Footage Of Australia’s Massive Mouse Plague Will Haunt Your Nightmares

Ed Mazza, Overnight Editor                        

Parts of Australia are battling a “plague” of rodents.

Large rural portions of inland New South Wales and Queensland are being overrun by millions of mice, which have taken over farmland, homes, stores, hospitals and cars. They’re also eating everything in sight.

Reuters reported that the region’s bumper grain crop led to the surge in rodents.

“You can imagine that every time you open a cupboard, every time you go to your pantry, there are mice present,” rodent expert Steve Henry told the wire service. “And they’re eating into your food containers, they’re fouling your clean linen in your linen cupboard, they’re running across your bed at night.”

They’re also leaving behind haunting videos and images:

At one farm, the mice ate through hundreds of thousands of dollars of hay bales, reducing them to mounds of dust in a matter of weeks.

“It’s a real kick in the guts,” farmer Rowena Macrae of Coonamble told Queensland Country Life. “It’s so very hard to watch.”

“They stink whether they are alive or dead, you can’t escape the smell sometimes,” Pip Goldsmith of Coonamble, who has trapped thousands of mice, told The Guardian Australia. “It’s oppressive, but we are resilient.”

Lisa Gore of Toowoomba told the newspaper that her 12-year-old son caught 183 in a single night.

“It’s like his job at the moment,” she said. “He is very proud of himself.”

Local reports said the mouse population continues to grow and efforts to poison the rodents had started to backfire as dead critters were turning up in water tanks. One homeowner in Elong Elong investigating a water blockage encountered a “revolting” smell, according to Australia’s ABC News.

“We always filter the water going into our house from the tanks so for us, personally, we feel we’ve covered our precautions so we didn’t notice anything with the taste,” Louise Hennessy told the news agency. “But the smell of the mice at the top of the tank was so disgusting.”

Public health authorities are now warning of the potential for bacteria in the water if dead mice remain in the tanks.

Authorities said a drop in temperature or a heavy rainfall could wipe out most of the mice at any time.

Women Are More Likely To Have COVID Vaccine Side Effects Than Men. Fun!

Women Are More Likely To Have COVID Vaccine Side Effects Than Men. Fun!

Asia Ewart                       March 22, 2021

 

A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has concluded that women are more likely to experience side effects after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the “First Month of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring” study published last month, 79% of reports of the more serious symptoms caused by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines came from women.

The month long study followed the first 13,794,904 Americans who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, noting how they reacted to the shots from December 14, 2020, to January 13, 2021. People reported symptoms using the vaccine adverse event reporting system, or VAERS, for the study; the VAERS system also monitored the vaccine’s effect on the body. During this time, the most frequent side effects reported were headache, fatigue, and dizziness, along with 62 cases of anaphylaxis. One hundred and thirteen total deaths were also reported by the study’s end, including 78 among long-term care facility residents taking part. By the end of the study, it was found the vaccine’s side effects were overwhelmingly reported by women. Only 62.1% of the actual study participants were women.

Experts have pointed to differences in immune systems between men and women as a reason why one sex reported more symptoms. “We see more autoimmune diseases in women than we do in men and we know the effects of pregnancy on the immune system can be significant,” David Wohl, MD, an infectious diseases physician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, told ABC7 on Saturday. He also explained that women are more likely to report their symptoms to a medical professional compared to men.

Microbiologist and immunologist Sabra Klein, PhD, who works at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, echoed the “sex difference” in how people are affected by vaccines in The New York Times earlier this month, stating that it was “completely consistent with past reports of other vaccines.” She also noted that “there is value to preparing women that they may experience more adverse reactions. That is normal, and likely reflective of their immune system working.”

Since the study’s end, Johnson & Johnson’s COVID – 19 vaccine has been given approval for usage in the U.S., and AstraZeneca is applying for approval in April. Vaccine eligibility currently varies by state, but many frontline workers, public-facing government and other employees, and people over the age of 60 are among those being given priority. President Joe Biden announced earlier this month that all adults in the U.S. would be eligible to be vaccinated by May 1 in an effort to get the country largely back to “normal” by July 4.

Strong reaction to first COVID-19 vaccine may signal previous infection, experts say

Strong reaction to first COVID-19 vaccine may signal previous infection, experts say

Here's what a strong reaction to the first COVID-19 vaccine shot means. (Photo: Getty Images)
Here’s what a strong reaction to the first COVID-19 vaccine shot means. (Photo: Getty Images)

 

With over 40 million Americans now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, it’s no secret that the shots can lead to unpleasant side effects such as fever, headache, body aches and fatigue. But while initial research suggested that individuals were more likely to experience these symptoms after the second dose, experts now say that those who previously had COVID-19 — whether knowingly or not — may end up reacting more strongly to the first dose.

One study released in early February from Bar-Ilan University in Israel found that the immune response created after the first dose of vaccine in those who previously had COVID-19 was “so effective” that it “opens the debate as to whether one dose of the vaccine may suffice.” Another study published in the Lancet found a 140-fold increase in antibodies after the first vaccine among those who had previously had a COVID-19 infection versus those who hadn’t.

Dr. Erin Morcomb, a family medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and head of its COVID-19 vaccination team, confirms that the reactions can vary based on your health history. “What we’ve seen in studies is that the second dose does tend to have a little bit more potential to cause side effects than the first dose, but for people who have had COVID-19 infection previously and then recovered, they are at higher risk of having those same side effects after their first dose,” she says.

The reason, she explains, is that those who developed the infection previously have an immune system that is already primed to fight it off. “After they’ve had their COVID-19 active infection, they’ve made some antibodies themselves in their body to the national infection,” Morcomb says. “Then when they get their first dose, their body is already recognizing that they have some antibodies and they can make a really robust immune response to that first dose of vaccine.”

She notes that those who had treatment with monoclonal antibodies need to wait 90 days before getting the vaccine as they can “block the immune system for making a good response to the vaccine.”

For those who haven’t had COVID-19, the first shot of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine ends up serving as the body’s introduction to the virus. That’s why the second dose, in those who haven’t had COVID-19, can often cause a big reaction. “This time, the body recognizes it like, ‘Hey, I’ve seen this before,'” says Morcomb. “And then it really tries to ramp up the immune response.”

To be sure, that’s not to say that those who don’t have side effects should be concerned. Morcomb says there is no research suggesting that the absence of side effects is an indicator that the vaccine isn’t working. “For some reason [some individuals], their bodies just don’t show the side effects as much,” she says. “So it’s not like an absolute rule that just because you had COVID, you’re going to have side effects, because it doesn’t happen in everybody. And those people should still be reassured that they’re making a good immune response to the vaccine.”

As for how soon after a COVID-19 infection individuals can get vaccinated, she says there’s good news there as well. “Initially we had recommended waiting 90 days from a COVID infection to get the vaccine but that actually isn’t necessary — there’s not a decreased effectiveness of the vaccine if you get it before that,” she says. “So here we are recommending that once people come off of their quarantine — so 14 days — that they get their shot then.”

Electric Semi Trucks Are Actually Cheaper Per Mile Than Diesel Trucks, Report Finds

EcoWatch – Electric Vehicles

Electric Semi Trucks Are Actually Cheaper Per Mile Than Diesel Trucks, Report Finds

Climate Nexus                      March 17, 2021

Electric Semi Trucks Are Actually Cheaper Per Mile Than Diesel Trucks, Report Finds
Diesel trucks are seen driving along a U.S. highway. Lumigraphics / Getty Images

 

Heavy duty electric trucks (a.k.a. semis) cost so much less to operate per mile than diesel-powered trucks at today’s prices that they would pay for themselves in just three years, according to a new report by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA, and UC-Berkeley.

Electrifying heavy-duty trucks would substantially improve air quality.

Semis account for just 11% of vehicles on the road, but more than half of carbon pollution and 71% of deadly particulate pollution.

At today’s costs, electric semis could cost 13% less per mile than a comparable diesel-powered truck, and could cost just half as much per mile by 2030 with the right mix of policy.

For a deeper dive:

E&E, The Detroit Bureau; Commentary: Forbes, Silvio Marcacci op-ed

Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change

Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change

Nancy Pfund                         March 11, 2021

It seems that every week a new agribusiness, consumer packaged goods company, bank, technology corporation, celebrity or Facebook friend announces support for regenerative agriculture.

For those of us who have been working on climate and/or agriculture solutions for the last couple of decades, this is both exciting and worrisome.

With the rush to be a part of something so important, the details and hard work, the incremental advancements and wins, as well as the big, hairy problems that remain can be overlooked or forgotten. When so many are swinging for the fences, it’s easy to forget that singles and doubles usually win the game.

As a managing partner and founder of DBL Partners, I have specifically sought out companies to invest in that not only have winning business models but also solve the planet’s biggest problems. I believe that agriculture can be a leading climate solution while feeding a growing population.

At the same time, I want to temper the hype, refocus the conversation and use the example of agriculture to forge a productive template for all business sectors with carbon habits to fight climate change.

First, let’s define regenerative agriculture: It encompasses practices such as cover cropping and conservation tillage that, among other things, build soil health, enhance water retention, and sequester and abate carbon.

The broad excitement around regenerative agriculture is tied to its potential to mitigate climate impact at scale. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that soil sequestration has the potential to eliminate over 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to 5% of U.S. emissions.

It is important to remember that regenerative practices are not new. Conservationists have advocated for cover cropping and reduced tillage for decades, and farmers have led the charge.

The reason these practices are newly revered today is that, when executed at scale, with the heft of new technology and innovation, they have demonstrated agriculture’s potential to lead the fight against climate change.

So how do we empower farmers in this carbon fight?

Today, offset markets get the majority of the attention. Multiple private, voluntary markets for soil carbon have appeared in the last couple of years, mostly supported by corporations driven by carbon neutrality commitments to offset their carbon emissions with credit purchases.

Offset markets are a key step toward making agriculture a catalyst for a large-scale climate solution; organizations that support private carbon markets build capacity and the economic incentive to reduce emissions.

“Farming carbon” will drive demand for regenerative finance mechanisms, data analytics tools and new technology like nitrogen-fixing biologicals — all imperatives to maximize the adoption and impact of regenerative practices and spur innovation and entrepreneurship.

It’s these advancements, and not the carbon credit offsets themselves, that will permanently reduce agriculture emissions.

Offsets are a start, but they are only part of the solution. Whether generated by forestry, renewable energy, transportation or agriculture, offsets must be purchased by organizations year after year, and do not necessarily reduce a buyer’s footprint.

Inevitably, each business sector needs to decarbonize its footprint directly or create “insets” by lowering the emissions within its supply chain. The challenge is, this is not yet economically viable or logistically feasible for every organization.

For organizations that purchase and process agricultural products — from food companies to renewable fuel producers — soil carbon offsets can indirectly reduce emissions immediately while also funding strategies that directly reduce emissions permanently, starting at the farm.

DBL invests in ag companies that work on both sides of this coin: facilitating soil carbon offset generation and establishing a credit market while also building fundamentally more efficient and less carbon-intensive agribusiness supply chains.

This approach is a smart investment for agriculture players looking to reduce their climate impact. The business model also creates demand for environmental services from farmers with real staying power.

Way back in 2006, when DBL first invested in Tesla, we had no idea we would be helping to create a worldwide movement to unhinge transportation from fossil fuels.

Now, it’s agriculture’s turn. Backed by innovations in science, big data, financing and farmer networking, investing in regenerative agriculture promises to slash farming’s carbon footprint while rewarding farmers for their stewardship.

Future generations will reap the benefits of this transition, all the while asking, “What took so long?”