Good News: Covid Edition

There is all sorts of good news, plus some bad news, on the Covid Front.

First, good news:

1. Manufacturers are working to make an easier and cheaper vaccine for greater use in areas with less spare dollars to spend. That is great and can be scaled up quickly. The great Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are hard to create, manufacture and store (link).
2. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use new technology, AND have proved this technology works well and quickly (using messenger RNA or mRNA). This should allow Moderna and Pfizer (and others using this technology) to create some new vaccines for very difficult diseases; including some cancers, rabies, new strains of Covid and others (link). This might move us from treating Cancer with agents to reduce the spread to actual prophylactic vaccinations that prevent cancers from starting.
3. While not understood well YET, it turns out the new mRNA vaccines seem to help with longer term Covid cases, the "long haul covid". If this is proves correct we might be able to find out what causes similar conditions like fibromyalgia and epstien-barr. 
4. The South Africa and Brazilian variants of Covid are unique in that they add an extra spike protein. They are more resistant to vaccines, but it appears that the vaccine does inhibit the latest varriants so they are not nearly as deadly. A single booster may be needed next year.

Those are great advances in medical technology. 

The bad news?

1. A newer variant seems to be more transmittable in children.

So, generally great news.