Meanderings 28 August 21
May your weekend refresh and restore you.
Lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines are allowing us to feel optimistic again, after more than a year of anxiety and tragedy. But vaccines are only one side of the coin – we also need treatments that can prevent severe disease after someone has been infected. In the past year, there has been significant progress in developing effective antibody-based therapies, and three drugs are currently available through emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration.
Sotrovimab, the newest antibody therapy, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology after a large collaborative study by scientists from across the nation discovered a natural antibody (in the blood of a SARS survivor, back in 2003) that has remarkable breadth and efficacy.
Experiments showed that this antibody, called S309, neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 strains – including newly emerged mutants that can now “escape” from previous antibody therapies – as well as the closely related original SARS-CoV virus.
Jay Nix, leader of the Molecular Biology Consortium based at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), used beamlines at the ALS and beamlines at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to perform X-ray crystallography on samples of survivor-derived antibodies during an early phase of the study. His work, alongside other crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy findings, helped generate detailed structural maps of how these antibodies bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, allowing the wider team to select the most promising contenders and advance them to cell culture- and animal-based studies. Following exciting lab results, the developers designed sotrovimab based on the structure of S309, and evaluated it in clinical trials.
I agree, athletes: get tested!
Another MLB draft has come and gone, and for all involved, it’s always something of a bittersweet feeling. While it’s nice for scouts and players to be rewarded for the fruits of their labor (and indulge in some much-deserved downtime), it’s always a bit sad thinking of the players that didn’t get the bonuses they expected or the scouts just missing out on a player they really hoped to add to their organization. Still, time and tide wait for no one, and the players have quickly either signed their first pro contract or have moved onto the college campuses where they’ll be competing next spring.
As any good prospect expert will tell you, we’re years away from being able to judge this particular class to decide who might have “won” this draft. Still, the draft is an important snapshot in time of how teams value players at this given moment (especially in regards to whom they think has the most long-term potential). And, in working with our baseball partners, it gives us at Vizual Edge access to the scores of top draft picks, having tested 72% of all hitters drafted.
Given said access, we ran the numbers for how Vizual Edge scores correlate with draft signing bonuses, and the findings were stunning. Removing college seniors from the equation (which is a weird market and another topic for another day), players taken in the top 5 rounds with an Edge Score over 84.0 received signing bonuses of nearly $200,000 higher than those below 84.0. And players with a Convergence score (your ability to track incoming objects/pitches) above 45 received bonuses nearly $500,000 higher than those that scored below 45.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian farmer couldn’t go to his aunt’s funeral because of pandemic restrictions so he paid his respects with a novel alternative: dozens of sheep arranged in the shape of a heart.
Drone-shot video of pregnant ewes munching barley in a paddock while unwittingly expressing Ben Jackson’s affection for his beloved Auntie Deb was viewed by mourners at her funeral in the city of Brisbane in Queensland state this week.
Jackson was locked down at the time across a state border at his farm in Guyra in New South Wales state, 430 kilometers (270 miles) away.
“It took me a few goes to get it right … and the final result is what you see. That was as close to a heart as I could get it,” Jackson said on Thursday.
Jackson started experimenting with making shapes with sheep to relieve the monotonous stress of hand-feeding livestock during a devastating drought across most of Australia that broke in the early months of the pandemic.
CHICAGO (CBS) — We talk a lot about the crime happening on the South Side and West Side of Chicago, but there are also so many stories of everyday people doing extraordinary things.
One of them is the woman you’re about to meet. CBS 2’s Audrina Bigos spent some time with a pastor in North Lawndale, a neighborhood she serves and is working hard to revive.
“I want people to look at the assets that are here, like the beautiful greystones and brownstones,” said Reshorna Fitpatrick, executive pastor of the historic Stone Temple Baptist Church. “I want them to see beauty. I want them to see peace.”
Her mission is to bring beauty, peace, and restoration back to North Lawndale, the West Side neighborhood where she grew up and now works.
“If I wake up and don’t do something for somebody else, oh my God, I feel like, ‘Did you really serve your purpose today?’” she said.
A garden next to the church is a picture of purpose; a labor of love planted and pruned by many, including volunteers from Chicago Sinai Congregation, a synagogue nearly 10 miles away in the Gold Coast neighborhood.
Volunteer and Sinai’s Susan Stone said if anyone can make things happen in North Lawndale, it’s Fitzpatrick.
“Reshorna is just a remarkable force in the community, and has been a wonderful partner,” Stone said.
And that garden partnership has produced an abundance of kale, chard, cabbage, greens, squash, you name it. It’s all available to anyone who needs it.
“We’re in a space where it’s a food desert, right? So we’re growing food, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables. People can come in and grab ’em and eat ’em, and I think that’s lovely,” Fitzpatrick said.
The pastor took Bigos across busy Douglas Boulevard to a plaza blooming with flowers and plants, and plans to turn a set of shipping crates into coffee and flower shops to create training and jobs for people in the neighborhood; a haven in North Lawndale.
“Every space may not be peaceful, but this one is. The one across the street is. The ones we’re creating are,” Fitzpatrick said. “Imagine if we create a space on every block. We’ll have peace on every block. That’s what I’m striving for.”
In the race to get Americans vaccinated, two groups are commanding a lot of attention: Republicans and white evangelicals. Both are less likely to have been vaccinated already and more likely to refuse vaccination altogether.
But it’s the overlap between white Republicans and white evangelicals that is especially telling, as white evangelical Republicans are among the most likely groups in the U.S. to refuse vaccination. According to a June survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, where I’m the research director, and the Interfaith Youth Core, white evangelical Republicans were considerably less likely to say they were vaccinated or planning to get vaccinated as soon as possible (53 percent) than Republicans who were not white evangelicals (62 percent). Moreover, white evangelical Republicans were the most likely of any large subgroup we surveyed to say they were refusing to get vaccinated (26 percent).
That the combination of being a Republican and a white evangelical would form a particularly toxic anti-vax stew, more significant than party or religion alone, seems obvious to me, but then again, I grew up in rural Texas — I see this combination of beliefs in motion every day on Facebook, where I’m connected to many high school and college classmates. …
Complicating matters further, the pandemic also fits neatly into “end times” thinking — the belief that the end of the world and God’s ultimate judgment is coming soon. In fact, nearly two-thirds of white evangelical Republicans (64 percent) from our March survey agreed that the chaos in the country today meant the “end times” were near. Faced, then, with the belief that death and the end of the world are a fulfillment of God’s will, it becomes difficult to convince these believers that vaccines are necessary. Sixty-nine percent of white evangelical Republicans who said they refused to get vaccinated agreed that the end times were near. …
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that most white evangelical Republicans, and Republicans in general, disagreed with our question about the Golden Rule, that “because getting vaccinated against COVID-19 helps protect everyone, it is a way to live out the religious principle of loving my neighbors” (57 percent and 58 percent, respectively). This may be because for some white evangelicals and Republicans, politics and religion are inseparable — and God’s will, or their interpretation of it, controls everything. [HT: LNMM]
CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — The young Afghan women who inspired much of the world with their work as members of the all-female Afghan Robotics team are safe, thanks in part to the tireless efforts of an Oklahoma mom.
Allyson Reneau told NewsNation Prime’s Marni Hughes on Monday that she met the young women when they were in the United States.
“They had so much fun, and we just stayed in touch for a couple of years. They were really hoping to come to the United States and pursue their engineering degrees and then go back to their country at that time, and hopefully make a difference there.”
The all-girl Afghan group first gained international attention in 2017, when they traveled to Washington, D.C., for an international robotics competition.
As the Taliban swept into power, the girls left their homeland “with just a suitcase and clothes on their back. … But, you know, they’ve grown up in a war zone. They’re tough … but they’re gentle and humble. And they’re just absolute geniuses.”
Reneau said that while she is reluctant to discuss details about the girls’ escape, she is hearing from universities with “scholarship offers for them in the United States. … They’re a little anxious about their future, but I just let them know everything’s gonna be OK.”