| | |  | BY JOANNE KENEN | Presented by |  |
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| With help from Renuka Rayasam MRNA IS HERE TO STAY — The new mRNA vaccines for Covid-19 aren’t just the pathway out of this particular virus or even its variants. They open the door to a whole new approach to immunizations. Vaccinologists are jazzed. The rest of us should be too. “That new era is already here,” according to Wayne Koff, president and CEO of the Human Vaccines Project. The mRNA vaccines for Covid took on even more importance this week amid concern over possible links to rare blood clots with the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines. To get a layperson’s glimpse into this new world, Nightly spoke, separately, to two top scientists — Koff, and Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and the Center for HIV-AIDS Vaccine. Let’s make a few things clear right away. First, the Covid vaccines were developed with amazing speed — less than a year, when vaccine development would more normally take a decade or so. But much of the underlying basic scientific work had been done years earlier, both on messenger RNA and on understanding coronaviruses, after the SARS outbreak in 2003, and MERS in 2012. So while the pandemic work was super-duper fast, it wasn’t out of the blue. (That’s our vaccine-safety-plug of the day.) Second, while Koff, Haynes and other scientists are very excited about how the mRNA breakthrough could lead to new vaccines for tough diseases like malaria, HIV and flu it’s not going to happen next week. (When you see a headline about a successful experiment on a bunch of mice — remember, you are not a mouse.) Which doesn’t mean breakthroughs won’t come. There are already interesting advances, new ideas, new approaches, including on how to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) for HIV.
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A member of the Bundeswehr assists in preparing trays of syringes filled with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 at the Arena Berlin mass vaccination center in Germany. | Getty Images | But the reason scientists are so excited is bigger than the mRNA platform. That’s crucial of course, but it’s one of several “converging leaps” in technology and knowledge, the others being computational biology, artificial intelligence and machine learning. “That has unquestionably put us in a position to transform human health,” Koff told Nightly. “We have the ability to look at huge sets of data in ways that we had never been able to do before,” he said. “What we’re trying to do here is understand the immune system in the way the genome project sequenced the genome a couple of decades ago.” (That was 2003, to be precise.) Both Koff and Haynes are HIV vaccine veterans. In comparison, the novel coronavirus — with all its variants, with all the strange and variable ways that Covid-19 manifests as a disease — is a relatively easy target for a vaccine-maker. HIV in contrast, is one of the “fastest evolving life forms on earth,” said Haynes. “Covid is slow in comparison.” The coronavirus that causes our current pandemic could also have been an even more efficient, more deadly killer. In other words, even though it’s really, really bad, it could have been worse. But even if we are “on the brink of a golden age,” as Koff put it, there are caveats aplenty. Messenger RNA vaccines provide “a platform that has great potential, it’s flexible, it’s fast.” But there are still challenges in finding the right target (the antigen), eliciting the right immunological response, making sure it works broadly in the population, and that the protection endures. We’ve done it with smallpox and yellow fever and polio and measles. But not with HIV, TB, malaria — and not particularly effectively with the flu. Haynes, who has been working with mRNA tech for four years already, says the HIV virus is particularly challenging because the body doesn’t want to make the antibodies. The virus basically inserts itself into the cells of the person it infects — and then it hides. “Scientists have to figure out how to coax it into responding — and even unraveling that took about 15 years.” When a vaccine is finally achieved, “it will be a very complex vaccine.” His institute is working on other diseases, including coming up with a “universal” or at least broad flu vaccine, a sort of holy grail for vaccine researchers, effective against multiple flu strains (including the ones that give epidemiologists nightmares and the ones that don’t yet exist that give them even worse nightmares.) The mRNA is promising here. These kinds of shots are easy to manufacture, and can mix different elements, like the flu itself does. And from what we know so far about the first two coronavirus shots, the immune response looks both strong and durable. So in addition to a “universal flu,” shot, scientists are also aiming for a “pan-coronavirus” vaccine. That would protect not just against the virus the whole world is combatting now but a whole lot of related ones, living in bats but capable of jumping to humans. And they could be more contagious and/or more lethal than the one we’re now fighting. The threat is broad and real. “There are hundreds of thousands of various viruses out there,” Haynes said. They need to be studied and sampled “to figure out what is out there” and what we should be preparing for. But with mRNA, once a virus does hit, a vaccine can be made quickly — even faster than the 10 months or so it took to make the first Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots. Maybe, he said, as little as 60 days. Imagine if we had a shot last March, not last November. Speed like that, Haynes said, could mean the difference between a manageable outbreak and a raging pandemic. The potential — whether for HIV or malaria or TB or Alzheimer's or universal flu or “Pan-corona” isn’t going to be realized just by hard work in labs. It will require sustained investment — investment that the scientists hope we’ll make after everything we’ve endured this year. “This has shut the world down, cost millions of lives, will have lingering effects,” Koff said. “If we can’t convince the key stakeholders that now is the time to put the pieces of pandemic preparedness into place, we never will. And that’s what we’re trying to do.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at jkenen@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @joannekenen and @renurayasam.
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A message from the SEIU: President Biden is investing $400 billion in care workers — largely women of color & immigrants working on the frontlines of this pandemic. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create millions of sustainable union care jobs of the future. It’s time for Congress to pass President Biden’s jobs plan! Learn more | | | | | ‘STEEP LEARNING CURVE’ — Top White House officials have grown increasingly frustrated with Health Secretary Xavier Becerra over his department’s sluggish effort to house thousands of unaccompanied minors , as the administration grapples with a record number of children crossing the southern border, Adam Cancryn, Sabrina Rodríguez and Anita Kumar write. The dissatisfaction with Becerra centers on complaints he’s been slow to take charge of the response since his confirmation on March 18, according to eight current and former government officials and others familiar with the situation. The administration has scrambled to find new shelters and speed the vetting of adults to care for the children as thousands remain in packed detention facilities along the border. Biden aides led by Domestic Policy chief Susan Rice and Amy Pope, a senior adviser on migration hired to help direct the administration’s border response, have pressed the health department in meetings over the past several weeks to pick up the pace, warning that the influx of unaccompanied children is only likely to accelerate into the spring and early summer. But a month into Becerra’s tenure, officials working on the issue have privately questioned his preparedness for managing such a sprawling emergency — and his willingness to take ownership of a historically intractable and politically divisive problem. “He did not fully appreciate the issue when he first came in,” said one senior administration official. “It’s been a steep learning curve for him.”
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| | SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TO JOIN AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION: Power is changing, in Washington and across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. Our twice-weekly newsletter "The Recast” breaks down how race and identity are shaping politics and policy in America and we are recasting how we report on it. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear from important new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | — Biden to raise Trump’s refugee cap after blowback: The Biden administration this afternoon said it will raise the refugee cap by mid-May , a move that comes after swift backlash over an earlier announcement that it would keep in place the current historically low cap set by former President Donald Trump. — Mesh mask lands Capitol riot defendant in hot water with judge: A federal judge is demanding that a Pennsylvania woman arrested for her alleged role in the Capitol riot, Rachel Powell, explain why a video of her circulating online shows her wearing a porous, mesh mask despite another judge’s order to comply with Covid mask requirements while she awaits trial. — Greta Thunberg to testify in Congress on Earth Day: Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg will testify before Congress at an Earth Day hearing on Thursday, the same day that Biden will convene world leaders for a virtual conference on climate change. — Biden renews calls for gun reform after Indianapolis shooting: The mass shooting at a FedEx facility Thursday night left eight people dead and follows mass shootings last month in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo. It was at least the third mass shooting in the city this year, Indianapolis officials said at a press conference today.
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| | A message from the SEIU:  
| | | | | Nightly asked you: If you have been working remotely since the pandemic began last year, have you visited your office even once? Tell us what it was like. Your select, lightly edited responses are below: “I’ve been to my office exactly once since March 10, 2020. On Aug. 12, I signed up for a two-hour slot and spent all of five minutes inside. My only goal was to grab some notebooks and my office chair (and my back thanks me profusely for that; I shudder to think the physical state I’d be in if I hadn’t gotten a proper place to sit for WFH). It was eerie and quiet, very dystopian. We’re not fully reopening until September, so by the time I’m back, it will have been more than a year since my one visit. I find it very hard to picture what going back will be like.” — Seth Michaels, nonprofit communications, Washington, D.C. “We have a big, bright, colorful loft space for more than 100 people that we moved into six months before the pandemic started. Maybe three to five of us have been coming since July. So we have the run of the place. We’ve moved furniture, we move between conference rooms on a whim — whatever suits us that day. I bring my two dogs — Buttercup and Pablo — and they have a blast, chasing each other, tennis balls, exploring. All that said, I’d prefer to see my colleagues.” — Nicholas Turner, executive director, Brooklyn, N.Y. “We sent people home in mid-March 2020. In July I stopped in to check on the office. It was like being in a post-apocalyptic fiction movie. Files left on desks, wall calendars open to March 2020, silence instead of meeting banter. It was very sad. It’s April 2021. I try to be in the office at least once a week, but it just feels empty and unnecessary. I’m retiring in June and am missing being closer to my colleagues. Even though we communicate well remotely, the small kindnesses and moments of unexpected laughter are gone.” — Wendy Northcross, CEO, Cape Cod, Mass. “Walked back into my classroom for the first time in a year last week. We will return to in-person instruction next week. A flood of emotion ran through my head and heart, flashing back to the final day last March when they said ‘two weeks!’ We laughed back then, thinking a month at least. A whole year. No one's laughing now. The kids are shattered. So are we. Yeah, a flood of emotion ran through my head and heart. Time to start life again.” — Brent Smiley, middle school teacher, Los Angeles “I went back to my office once. As planned, no one else in my department was there at the same time. To get into the building, I had to go through underground walkways from a nearby building. When I unlocked the door, everything, even an old New York Times, was as I left it. I only stayed an hour. Being by myself in a big building felt a little too Halloween 15.” — Jill Abramson, Harvard senior lecturer, Cambridge, Mass.
| | PA DEMS’ BIG DILEMMA — With tattoos and the looks of a WWE body double, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman isn’t your average politician. He says that will help win over working class Trump voters in his bid to flip an open Senate seat in 2022, but he’s facing resistance from fellow Democrats who think the party should pick the most progressive candidate possible — not another white man with Rust Belt appeal. In the latest POLITICO Magazine cover story and in POLITICO Dispatch, Holly Otterbein reports on how the race has become an inflection point in the party.
| | | | ‘HEY! IT’S THE WEEKEND!’ — Matt Wuerker is outside in D.C.’s spring splendor for his Weekend Wrap , smelling the flowers and bringing us the latest in political cartoons and satire, including the departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the fight against Covid variants and the multiple police shootings rocking communities around the country.
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$10 million The amount Liberty University is seeking in a lawsuit filed against Jerry Falwell Jr. , accusing its former president of breaching his contract and fiduciary duty to the Christian school that has been engulfed in scandal over his personal behavior. |
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| | YOUR GUIDE TO THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: As the Biden administration closes in on three months in office, what are the big takeaways? Will polls that show support for infrastructure initiatives and other agenda items translate into Republican votes or are they a mirage? What's the plan to deal with Sen. Joe Manchin? Add Transition Playbook to your daily reads for details you won't find anywhere else that reveal what's really happening inside the West Wing and across the executive branch. Track the people, policies and power centers of the Biden administration. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | THE WOMAN WHO’S FOOLED YOU ON TWITTER — Comedian Blaire Erskine’s Twitter videos have made fools not just of the people she parodies, but also those who believe the characters she inhabits are real. That second list is one that includes filmmaker Michael Moore, journalist Katie Couric and yours truly, writes Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam. Moore and Couric believed one of her early viral skits impersonating a Trump supporter left stranded at an Omaha, Neb., rally. Your Nightly author won’t reveal which video fooled her because it’s, well, embarrassing. Erskine’s rise is an only-in-the-pandemic tale of someone who parlayed viral videos she created from her Atlanta apartment into actual, that is paid, comedy writing jobs in less than a year. It’s also a story about making comedy in the age of deep political polarization. “Lots of challenges,” Erskine told Nightly about political comedy. She’s careful not to spend too much time skewering radical ideologues because she doesn’t want to give them a bigger platform. She also admits that liberal-leaning comedians, like herself, struggle to mock Democrats. “We are also doing dumb stuff every day,” she said, “stuff that deserves to be talked about.” Despite the challenges, Erskine believes that political comedy is more important than ever right now. “I go back all the time to Jon Stewart’s first show after 9/11 and how he was able to make people laugh after one of the worst days in our country’s history,” she said. “It will always be important to be able to laugh at the absurdity of these people in power.” Watch Erskine get serious with Nightly.
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A message from the SEIU: President Biden’s plan to invest $400 billion in essential care infrastructure is a commitment to America’s future. It means millions of good union jobs for women of color and immigrant workers. It means accessible and affordable home care for all families — so our parents, grandparents and people with disabilities can live at home with dignity and independence. It means thriving, resilient communities.
Congress must meet the president’s commitment to invest in care infrastructure and care workers as a cornerstone of the American economy. Learn more and join us! | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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