Making Sense of Medical Science (MSMS)

A medical scientist explains medical news for lay people

about

Steve Clark, PhD is a retired university professor with a PhD in immunology and a past Special Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America. Clark has published dozens of papers based on his research and holds two drug patents. He taught medical and graduate students about cancer biology and genetics, and about research ethics. He also directed an NIH-funded PhD Graduate Program and chaired several executive-level faculty committees. Clark served on the University Chancellor’s Speaker’s Bureau. While retired, Clark has been blogging on the COVID pandemic, which is the subject of his next book.

Category: vaccines

Why It Is Necessary To Vaccinate Kids

May 10, 2021

Vaccine makers are applying to the FDA to approve the vaccines for children. Some people have questioned the need for this since kids seldom get sick, let alone die from COVID-19.
What Caused India’s Devastating Second Wave?

May 8, 2021

This outbreak threatens to extend the pandemic itself and drive world-wide infections to new highs, creating an enormous a breeding ground for new and potentially more dangerous viral variants.
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Safe For Pregnant Women

April 22, 2021

Now, an analysis of the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and the “v-safe after vaccination health checker, and its associated v-safe pregnancy registry, shows that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are safe for mothers and babies.
Vying With Viral Variants

April 14, 2021

What is a world to do? Besides increasing surveillance of viral variants, a couple more prevention initiatives are in the works. One is economic and the other scientific.
Paying The Piper

April 9, 2021

In the face of a pandemic caused by a new and deadly virus, states and local governments enact social-distancing measures, bans on crowds, closure orders, and mask mandates in an effort to flatten the curve and prevent health care systems from being overwhelmed with critically infected people? Initially, people are fairly compliant with the order,…
Vaccine Disinformation

March 31, 2021

There is a lot of misinformation and downright disinformation out there regarding face masks, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, the seriousness of COVID-19, etc. Many of these I already addressed in prior posts (see here and here). In this post, I focus solely on vaccine misinformation and disinformation in hopes my unvarnished explanation of the science might help…
In The Midst Of The Vaccine Frenzy, Let’s Not Forget Drugs

March 14, 2021

All of this begs two questions; why would vaccines be needed if we had an effective anti-viral drug, and why would a drug be needed if we had an effective vaccine?
Messenger-RNA Vaccines Are The Buzz, But The Real Technology Advance Is The Lipid Mixture That Delivers The mRNA

March 8, 2021

As exciting as it is to see a simple mRNA sequence generate immunity to a pathogen, it is the less “sexy” lipid, or concoction of fat molecules that makes it possible and has been a bit of a bottleneck in manufacturing the vaccines.
One Shot Is Effective And The Vax Does Not Need To Be Stored At Ultra-Cold Temperatures

February 22, 2021

The mRNA Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech generates robust immunity 2-4 weeks after one dose and can be stored in ordinary freezers instead of at ultracold temperatures as previously believed
Increasingly Contagious And Lethal CoV-2 Variants Are Popping Up Around The World

January 24, 2021

British public health officials just warned that the virus variant is just not more contagious, it also is 30-40% more lethal.

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Category: vaccines