Your new post is loading...
Stanley Plotkin is consulting for multiple companies and says more than one vaccine may be needed in this new pandemic. In 1964, an unprecedented epidemic of rubella (German measles) swept the United States. The virus responsible is about twice as contagious as the novel coronavirus spreading around the world today seems to be; rubella infected some 12.5 million people, an estimated one in 15 people in the United States. Like the novel coronavirus responsible for the current pandemic, the virus that causes rubella usually produced mild disease—in the case of rubella, typically fever and a rash. In about one-third of people, it caused no symptoms at all.
Although the coronavirus does kill some people, especially the elderly, rubella caused by far the most damage to fetuses, especially when a woman contracted the disease in early pregnancy. During the mid-1960s epidemic, some 20,000 U.S. babies were born with serious birth defects including blindness, deafness, heart defects, and intellectual disabilities. (There’s no evidence so far that this new coronavirus infects or hurts fetuses, but it’s an open question.)
In 1964, working in his Wistar Institute laboratory, Stanley Plotkin invented the rubella vaccine—the “R” in MMR—that’s now used the world over. Since then, he has worked extensively on the development and application of other vaccines, including ones for anthrax, polio, and rabies. He also coinvented the rotavirus vaccine that’s part of today’s childhood vaccine schedule....
