DailyOh! How long will Covid vaccine immunity last, to why Delhi Crime won an International Emmy
Some vaccines give life-long immunity. Some don’t.
What’s in a name, an Indian one, that is? A caste, a religion, and perhaps, a region too. But a two-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court has refused to see any of these in two names - Priyanka Kharwar and Salamat Ansari. “We do not see Priyanka Kharwar and Salamat Ansari as Hindu and Muslim, rather as two grown-up individuals who, out of their own free will and choice, are living together peacefully and happily [for] over a year,” the court said.
The court had to spell out what it sees, as the parents of the woman filed a case against Ansari charging him with ‘abduction to compel marriage’, after the two tied the knot against the wishes of the family and Priyanka became ‘Alia’ post conversion to Islam. The Allahabad HC said all it is concerned with is protecting the life and liberty of an individual.
The Bombay High Court, meanwhile, heard a petition from actor Kangana Ranaut and her sister Rangoli. The petition seeks to cancel an FIR registered against the sisters over allegations of making objectionable comments on social media, aimed at provoking communal tension.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India has rejected a plea challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election as MP from Varanasi in 2019. This, after the plea was rejected by the Allahabad High Court. Remember Tej Bahadur Yadav? The Indian Army jawan had in 2017 cooked a storm releasing a video allegedly of the substandard food served to jawans. Yadav showed meal box that had a watery dal, which he said had only turmeric and no dal in it, along with a burnt roti.
Yadav was subsequently sacked. He then decided to take the political plunge straight up in Varanasi’s Ganga against PM Modi. But, as luck would have it, Yadav’s nomination papers were rejected. Yadav argued that his papers were rejected for “extraneous reasons”. You can’t take your petition higher than the SC. So there is no chance of a re-election. If the SC hadn’t rejected Yadav’s plea, people would have rejected his candidature. So either way, a rejection was unavoidable. Maybe Yadav paid heed to all that mumbo-jumbo about how results don’t matter as long as you fight. If results don’t matter, why fight? Give yourself some rest.
Refusing to take rest is Cyclone Nivar that is heading towards Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and is likely to make it by evening tomorrow. If Nivar won’t stop, teams of NDRF too won’t rest. The National Disaster Response Force has readied 30 teams to deal with what happens when Nivar makes landfall. The thing with cyclones is you don’t know how disastrous they can be till they make landfall. It is totally possible they just lose steam and relent with heavy rains and strong winds, while it is totally possible that they cause heavy destruction.
#WATCH: Visuals from Gandhi Beach in Puducherry as strong winds hit the region, sea turns rough. #NivarCyclone is very likely to cross Tamil Nadu & Puducherry coasts between Karaikal & Mamallapuram on the evening of 25th November, as per IMD. pic.twitter.com/hFXEBlpOXA
— ANI (@ANI) November 24, 2020
But that which looked impossible has FINALLY happened in the US with US President Donald Trump relenting and accepting Joe Biden as the next President. Trump has instructed his officials to cooperate with the incoming administration.
That doesn’t mean Trump has conceded defeat. Hell, no.
“Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!” he wrote in a tweet, adding that his team should do “what needs to be done”.
This came a day after White House Vaccine Chief Moncef Slaoui said the first Americans can get the coronavirus vaccine in December. Trump has maintained that authorities deliberately delayed the announcement of the vaccine to foil his re-election bid. He has blamed pretty much everyone apart from himself. But then why should he join Trump-bashing when everyone else is at it? Someone’s got to bash others too. There should be fair distribution.
They are saying that for the vaccine too. PM Modi today held a meeting with chief ministers and other stakeholders on the vaccine distribution programme even as scientists are working on the vaccine preparation and Serum Institute is working on vaccine production.
But today we want to talk about how long the vaccine will protect you after you manage to get it. Dr Randeep Guleria, head of Delhi's AIIMS, has said that a vaccine against the virus will provide protection for at least a year. But the chain of transmission will break due to the vaccine and once the virus can’t transmit, it can’t survive. Guleria, however, believes that the virus won’t disappear but exist in a milder form for some time. He assumes World Health Organization would declare the pandemic over by 2023.
Why is it that some vaccines provide lifelong immunity, while some don’t?
Some vaccine designers believe that a live but weakened pathogen, or its genes, stitched into a harmless virus that acts as a Trojan horse, induces the longest-lasting, most robust responses.
The measles vaccine, which provides life-long immunity, uses this kind of a weakened virus. Measles, in fact, raced through residents of the Faroe Islands, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, in 1781. The disease did not reappear in the residents for 65 years, till a visitor brought it back. In fact, no one alive during the first outbreak got ill of the disease again. So this meant the antibodies developed lasted a person’s lifetime.
Many vaccines use a killed pathogen or a genetically engineered vaccine and they provide immunity for a period of time. Not everyone agrees. Some vaccine designers believe the second kind works just as well as the first one.
For flu, you see, both variants of the vaccine exist. And neither provides sturdy protection. So, you need booster doses after the initial doses. The effectiveness of some influenza vaccines can disappear as quickly as in 90 days.
So, basically the final word on how long a vaccine remains effective and why, hasn’t been spoken – or written - yet. Just leave it to luck for now.
States have been told, by the Centre, to not leave things to luck and work on cold storage facilities as scientists work on the vaccine and the larger questions around vaccines.
If the arrival of the vaccine is good news in the offing, there is good news that has already arrived. The Netflix show, Delhi Crime (2019), has won big at the 48th International Emmy Awards this year. The show has bagged the award as the Best Drama Series. The show you know was based on the December 16 gang rape and murder of a paramedic student in 2012. The show contained many half-truths and overlooked many details in public domain, so it became more of a drama than a show truly based on the incident.
Drama, the Word Of The Day, comes from Greek word dran, which means ‘do, act’. Drama today may exist as a form of entertainment but it started as a religious requirement. You may say the requirement of religion is itself disputed but let’s save that dispute for another day.
Coming back to drama in religion, Bible existed in Latin. Quite like Sanskrit, this was known to a few. So, the clergy involved living pictures to explain the text to masses. The performers acted in dumb shows. As time passed, performers acted as well as spoke their parts. And the whole thing came to be called drama. If you are religious and in a debate with someone on the issue, do tell them that drama originated out of religion.
You can totally save that information for yourself because proving anything to anyone may set you on the path of arguments, totally avoidable.
What is also avoidable is getting caught in WhatsApp OTP frauds. WhatsApp is being targeted by scammers and hackers, who are now using OTP tricks to gain illegal access to accounts.
How does this work? A person sends you a message on WhatsApp with an OTP, saying she sent the OTP on your number mistakenly. The excuse for sending the OTP can differ. The fraudster then asks you to share the OTP and this gives them access to your account. A lot of information can be accessed from your WhatsApp account, including your bank account details, which you may have shared with a friend or family.
All you need to do is give such messages asking for an OTP a royal ignore.
Be careful and stay safe.
We will see you tomorrow.
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