How We Can Return to Normal Life in the COVID-19 Era
A crowded baseball stadium is the epitome of "getting back to normal."
I was asked recently when life might return to normal. The question is simple but the answer is complex, with many knowns, lots of known unknowns, and some unknown unknowns. But I'll give it my best shot.
To get the fatality rate down to flu-like levels would require that we cut Covid-19 fatalities down by a factor of 5.
Since I'm human (and thus want my life back), I might be biased toward optimism.
Here's one way to think about it: Is there another infection that causes sickness and death at levels that we tolerate? The answer, of course, is 'yes': influenza.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 2010 to 2019, an average of 30 million Americans had the flu each year, leading to an annual average of 37,000 deaths. This works out to an infection-fatality rate, or IFR, of 0.12 percent. We've tolerated that level of illness death from influenza for a century.
Before going on, let's get one thing out of the way: Back in March, Covid-19 wasn't, as some maintained, "like the flu," and it still isn't. Since then, the U.S. has had 3.9 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and 140,000 deaths, for an IFR of 3.6 percent. Taking all the cases — including asymptomatic patients and those with minimal symptoms who were never tested for Covid-19 — into account, the real IFR is probably 0.6 percent, or roughly 5 times that of the flu.
Nonetheless, even a partly effective vaccine, combined with moderately effective medications, could bring Covid-19 numbers down to a tolerable, flu-like, threshold. It's a goal that seems within our reach.
Chronic mask-wearing and physical distancing are not my idea of normal, nor, I would venture to guess, would most other Americans consider these desirable states in which to live. We need both now to achieve some semblance of normalcy, but they're decidedly not normal life. My notion of normal: daily life with no or minimal mask wearing, open restaurants and bars, ballparks with fans, and theaters with audiences.
My projection for when we might get there: perhaps a year from now.
To get the fatality rate down to flu-like levels would require that we cut Covid-19 fatalities down by a factor of 5, via some combination of fewer symptomatic cases and a lower chance that a symptomatic patient will go on to die. How might that happen?
First, we have to make some impact on young people – getting them to follow the public health directives at higher rates than they are currently. The main reason we need to push younger people to stay safe is that they can spread Covid-19 to vulnerable people (those who are older, with underlying health problems). But, once the most vulnerable are protected (through the deployment of some combination of effective medications and a vaccine), the fact that some young people aren't acting safely – or maybe won't take a vaccine themselves – wouldn't cause so much concern. The key is whether the people at highest risk for bad outcomes are protected.
Then there's the vaccine. The first principle: We don't need a 100 percent-effective vaccine injected into 320 million deltoid muscles (in the U.S. alone). Thank God, since it's fanciful to believe that we can have a vaccine that's 100 percent effective, universally available by next summer, and that each and every American agrees to be vaccinated.
How are we doing in our vaccine journey? We've been having some banner days lately, with recent optimistic reports from several of the vaccine companies. In one report, the leading candidate vaccine, the one effort being led by Oxford University, led to both antibodies and a cellular immune response, a very helpful belt-and-suspenders approach that increases the probability of long-lasting immunity. This good news comes on the heels of the positive news regarding the American vaccine being made by Moderna earlier in July.
While every article about vaccines sounds the obligatory cautionary notes, to date we've checked every box on the path to a safe and effective vaccine. We might not get there, but most experts are now predicting an FDA-approvable vaccine (more than 50 percent effective with no show-stopping side effects) by early 2021.
It is true that we don't know how long immunity will last, but that can be a problem to solve later. In this area, time is our friend. If we can get to an effective vaccine that lasts for a year or two, over time we should be able to discover strategies (more vaccine boosters, new and better medications) to address the possibility of waning immunity.
All things considered, I'm going to put my nickel down on the following optimistic scenario: we'll have one, and likely several, vaccines that have been proven to be more than 50 percent effective and safe by January, 2021.
If only that were the finish line.
Once we vaccinate a large fraction of high-risk patients, having a moderate number of unvaccinated people running around won't pose as much threat.
The investments in manufacturing and distribution should pay off, but it's still inconceivable that we'll be able to get vaccines to 300 million people in three to six months. For the 2009 Swine Flu, we managed to vaccinate about 1 in 4 Americans over six months.
So we'll need to prioritize. First in line will likely be the 55 million Americans over 65, and the six to eight million patient-facing healthcare workers. (How to sort priorities among people under 65 with "chronic diseases" will be a toughie.) Vaccinating 80-100 million vulnerable people, plus clinicians, might be achievable by mid-21.
If we can protect vulnerable people with an effective vaccine (with the less vulnerable waiting their turn over a subsequent 6-12 month period), that may be enough to do the trick. (Of course, vulnerable people may also be least likely to develop immunity in response to a vaccine. That could be an Achilles' heel – time will tell.)
Why might that be enough? Once we vaccinate a large fraction of high-risk patients, having a moderate number of unvaccinated people running around won't pose as much threat. Since they're at lower risk, they have a lower chance of getting sick and dying than those who received the vaccine first.
We're likely to have better meds by then, too. Since March, we've discovered two moderately effective medications for Covid-19 — remdesivir and dexamethasone. It seems likely that we'll find others by next summer, perhaps even a treatment that prevents patients from getting ill in the first place. There are many such therapies, ranging from zinc to convalescent plasma, currently being studied.
Moreover, we know that hospitals that are not overrun with Covid-19 have lower mortality rates. If we've gotten a fairly effective vaccine into most high-risk people, the hospitals are unlikely to be overwhelmed – another factor that may help lower the mortality rate to flu-like levels.
All of these factors – vaccination of most vulnerable people, one or two additional effective medications, hospitals and ICU's that aren't overwhelmed – could easily combine to bring the toll of Covid-19 down to something that resembles that of the flu. Then, we should be able to return to normal life.
Whatever the reason, if enough people refuse the vaccine, all bets are off.
What do I worry about? There's the growing anti-vaxxer movement, for one. On top of that, it seems that many Americans worry that a vaccine discovered in record speed won't be safe, or that the FDA approval process will have been corrupted by political influences. Whatever the reason, if enough people refuse the vaccine, all bets are off.
Assuming only high-risk people do get vaccinated, there will still be cases of Covid-19, maybe even mini-outbreaks, well into 2021 and likely 2022. Obviously, that's not ideal, and we should hope for a vaccine that results in the complete eradication of Covid-19. But the point is that, even with flu-like levels of illness and death, we should still be able to achieve "normal."
Hope is not a strategy, as the saying goes. But it is hope, which is more than we've had for a while.
Chicken that is grown entirely in a laboratory, without harming a single bird, could be sold in supermarkets in the coming months. But critics say the doubts about lab-grown meat have not been appropriately explored.
Last November, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration disclosed that chicken from a California firm called UPSIDE Foods did not raise safety concerns, it drily upended how humans have obtained animal protein for thousands of generations.
“The FDA is ready to work with additional firms developing cultured animal cell food and production processes to ensure their food is safe and lawful,” the agency said in a statement at the time.
Assuming UPSIDE obtains clearances from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, its chicken – grown entirely in a laboratory without harming a single bird – could be sold in supermarkets in the coming months.
“Ultimately, we want our products to be available everywhere meat is sold, including retail and food service channels,” a company spokesperson said. The upscale French restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco will have UPSIDE chicken on its menu once it is approved, she added.
Known as lab-grown or cultured meat, a product such as UPSIDE’s is created using stem cells and other tissue obtained from a chicken, cow or other livestock. Those cells are then multiplied in a nutrient-dense environment, usually in conjunction with a “scaffold” of plant-based materials or gelatin to give them a familiar form, such as a chicken breast or a ribeye steak. A Dutch company called Mosa Meat claims it can produce 80,000 hamburgers derived from a cluster of tissue the size of a sesame seed.
Critics say the doubts about lab-grown meat and the possibility it could merge “Brave New World” with “The Jungle” and “Soylent Green” have not been appropriately explored.
That’s a far cry from when it took months of work to create the first lab-grown hamburger a decade ago. That minuscule patty – which did not contain any fat and was literally plucked from a Petri dish to go into a frying pan – cost about $325,000 to produce.
Just a decade later, an Israeli company called Future Meat said it can produce lab-grown meat for about $1.70 per pound. It plans to open a production facility in the U.S. sometime in 2023 and distribute its products under the brand name “Believer.”
Costs for production have sunk so low that researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh expect sometime in early 2024 to produce lab-grown Wagyu steak to showcase the viability of growing high-end cuts of beef cheaply. The Carnegie Mellon team is producing its Wagyu using a consumer 3-D printer bought secondhand on eBay and modified to print the highly marbled flesh using a method developed by the university. The device costs $200 – about the same as a pound of Wagyu in the U.S. The initiative’s modest five-figure budget was successfully crowdfunded last year.
“The big cost is going to be the cells (which are being extracted by a cow somewhere in Pennsylvania), but otherwise printing doesn’t add much to the process,” said Rosalyn Abbott, a Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of bioengineering who is co-leader on the project. “But it adds value, unlike doing this with ground meat.”
Lab-Grown Meat’s Promise
Proponents of lab-grown meat say it will cut down on traditional agriculture, which has been a leading contributor to deforestation, water shortages and contaminated waterways from animal waste, as well as climate change.
An Oxford University study from 2011 concludes lab-grown meat could have greenhouse emissions 96 percent lower compared to traditionally raised livestock. Moreover, proponents of lab-grown meat claim that the suffering of animals would decline dramatically, as they would no longer need to be warehoused and slaughtered. A recently opened 26-story high-rise in China dedicated to the raising and slaughtering of pigs illustrates the current plight of livestock in stark terms.
Scientists may even learn how to tweak lab-grown meat to make it more nutritious. Natural red meat is high in saturated fat and, if it’s eaten too often, can lead to chronic diseases. In lab versions, the saturated fat could be swapped for healthier, omega-3 fatty acids.
But critics say the doubts about lab-grown meat and the possibility it could merge “Brave New World” with “The Jungle” and “Soylent Green” have not been appropriately explored.
A Slippery Slope?
Some academics who have studied the moral and ethical issues surrounding lab-grown meat believe it will have a tough path ahead gaining acceptance by consumers. Should it actually succeed in gaining acceptance, many ethical questions must be answered.
“People might be interested” in lab-grown meat, perhaps as a curiosity, said Carlos Alvaro, an associate professor of philosophy at the New York City College of Technology, part of the City University of New York. But the allure of traditionally sourced meat has been baked – or perhaps grilled – into people’s minds for so long that they may not want to make the switch. Plant-based meat provides a recent example of the uphill battle involved in changing old food habits, with Beyond Meat’s stock prices dipping nearly 80 percent in 2022.
"There are many studies showing that people don’t really care about the environment (to that extent)," Alvaro said. "So I don’t know how you would convince people to do this because of the environment.”
“From my research, I understand that the taste (of lab-grown meat) is not quite there,” Alvaro said, noting that the amino acids, sugars and other nutrients required to grow cultivated meat do not mimic what livestock are fed. He also observed that the multiplication of cells as part of the process “really mimic cancer cells” in the way they grow, another off-putting thought for would-be consumers of the product.
Alvaro is also convinced the public will not buy into any argument that lab-grown meat is more environmentally friendly.
“If people care about the environment, they either try and consume considerably less meat and other animal products, or they go vegan or vegetarian,” he said. “But there are many studies showing that people don’t really care about the environment (to that extent). So I don’t know how you would convince people to do this because of the environment.”
Ben Bramble, a professor at Australian National University who previously held posts at Princeton and Trinity College in Ireland, takes a slightly different tack. He noted that “if lab-grown meat becomes cheaper, healthier, or tastier than regular meat, there will be a large market for it. If it becomes all of these things, it will dominate the market.”
However, Bramble has misgivings about that occurring. He believes a smooth transition from traditionally sourced meat to a lab-grown version would allow humans to elide over the decades of animal cruelty perpetrated by large-scale agriculture, without fully reckoning with and learning from this injustice.
“My fear is that if we all switch over to lab-grown meat because it has become cheaper, healthier, or tastier than regular meat, we might never come to realize what we have done, and the terrible things we are capable of,” he said. “This would be a catastrophe.”
Bramble’s writings about cultured meat also raise some serious moral conundrums. If, for example, animal meat may be cultivated without killing animals, why not create products from human protein?
Actually, that’s already happened.
It occurred in 2019, when Orkan Telhan, a professor of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, collaborated with two scientists to create an art exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the future of foodstuffs.
Although the exhibit included bioengineered bread and genetically modified salmon, it was an installation called “Ouroboros Steak” that drew the most attention. That was comprised of pieces of human flesh grown in a lab from cultivated cells and expired blood products obtained from online sources.
The exhibit was presented as four tiny morsels of red meat – shaped in patterns suggesting an ouroboros, a dragon eating its own tail. They were placed in tiny individual saucers atop a larger plate and placemat with a calico pattern, suggesting an item to order in a diner. The artwork drew international headlines – as well as condemnation for Telhan’s vision.
Telhan’s artwork is intended to critique the overarching assumption that lab-grown meat will eventually replace more traditional production methods, as well as the lack of transparency surrounding many processed foodstuffs. “They think that this problem (from industrial-scale agriculture) is going be solved by this new technology,” Telhan said. “I am critical (of) that perspective.”
Unlike Bramble, Telhan is not against lab-grown meat, so long as its producers are transparent about the sourcing of materials and its cultivation. But he believes that large-scale agricultural meat production – which dates back centuries – is not going to be replaced so quickly.
“We see this again and again with different industries, like algae-based fuels. A lot of companies were excited about this, and promoted it,” Telhan said. “And years later, we know these fuels work. But to be able to displace the oil industry means building the infrastructure to scale takes billions of dollars, and nobody has the patience or money to do it.”
Alvaro concurred on this point, which he believes is already weakened because a large swath of consumers aren’t concerned about environmental degradation.
“They’re going to have to sell this big, but in order to convince people to do so, they have to convince them to eat this product instead of regular meat,” Alvaro said.
Hidden Tweaks?
Moreover, if lab-based meat does obtain a significant market share, Telhan suggested companies may do things to the product – such as to genetically modify it to become more profitable – and never notify consumers. That is a particular concern in the U.S., where regulations regarding such modifications are vastly more relaxed than in the European Union.
“I think that they have really good objectives, and they aspire to good objectives,” Telhan said. “But the system itself doesn't really allow for that much transparency.”
No matter what the future holds, sometime next year Carnegie Mellon is expected to hold a press conference announcing it has produced a cut of the world’s most expensive beef with the help of a modified piece of consumer electronics. It will likely take place at around the same time UPSIDE chicken will be available for purchase in supermarkets and restaurants, pending the USDA’s approvals.
Abbott, the Carnegie Mellon professor, suggested the future event will be both informative and celebratory.
“I think Carnegie Mellon would have someone potentially cook it for us,” she said. “Like have a really good chef in New York City do it.”
In this week's Friday Five, breathing this way may cut down on anxiety, a fasting regimen that could make you sick, this type of job makes men more virile, 3D printed hearts could save your life, and the role of metformin in preventing dementia.
The Friday Five covers five stories in research that you may have missed this week. There are plenty of controversies and troubling ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but this news roundup focuses on scientific creativity and progress to give you a therapeutic dose of inspiration headed into the weekend.
Here are the promising studies covered in this week's Friday Five, featuring interviews with Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, and Dr. Filip Swirski, professor of medicine and cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
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Here are the promising studies covered in this week's Friday Five, featuring interviews with Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, and Dr. Filip Swirski, professor of medicine and cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- Breathing this way cuts down on anxiety*
- Could your fasting regimen make you sick?
- This type of job makes men more virile
- 3D printed hearts could save your life
- Yet another potential benefit of metformin
* This video with Dr. Andrew Huberman of Stanford shows exactly how to do the breathing practice.