One town’s quest to unravel a coronavirus mystery
Lesson summary
Hi there, welcome to Plain English. I’m Jeff; JR is behind the controls; and this is Plain English lesson number 344. You can find the full and complete lesson online at PlainEnglish.com/344. Someone asked me, what do you mean by “the full and complete lesson”? It was a great question. I mean that if you like listening to the audio version, there’s even more to explore on the web site. So if you have only ever listened in the car, or on your headphones, and if you’ve never been online, then do check out the full and complete lesson at PlainEnglish.com/344.
Down to business : on today’s lesson, we’ll talk about the town of Serrana in São Paulo state in Brazil. That’s where Brazilian and Chinese researchers are conducting an experiment to determine whether the coronavirus vaccines simply prevent symptoms of COVID-19 or if they stop the disease from spreading. It’s an important distinction, and we’ll talk more about that study today. The expression is “to get in on the action” and we have a quote of the week.
Brazilian town in a vaccine experiment
Can someone who is vaccinated against COVID-19 still transmit the virus? It’s a tricky question. Vaccine makers have proven, via extensive trials, that their vaccines are effective in preventing symptoms, deaths, and serious cases. But it’s still not known if a vaccinated person can catch the disease and spread it to others, even if that person doesn’t show symptoms.
It’s an important question as the world looks toward relaxing distancing requirements put into place during the pandemic. If a vaccinated person cannot spread the disease, then any person who has gotten a vaccine should be able to act more freely in public. But if the vaccines only prevent symptoms—that is, if the vaccines still allow you to spread the virus to others, even if you yourself don’t get sick—then the vaccine isn’t quite the passport to freedom that you might hope.
Knowing the answer to this question will also let scientists better estimate the percentage of a population that needs to be vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity.
That brings us to a small town in Brazil, which hopes to shed some light on this tricky question. Serrana is a small town of about 45,000 people near the sugar cane farms in São Paulo state. All adults in Serrana will be vaccinated in a massive experiment sponsored by Butantan Institute, a public research center, and Sinovac, the Chinese maker of the vaccine.
The first-of-its kind study will try to map infections and the rate of vaccinations. The study divides the town into 25 regional zones. People will be vaccinated together with others who live in their zone. New zones will be vaccinated gradually. Researchers will then carefully map out new cases to see whether and how immunization in one area affects the spread of the disease in another area. The study is expected to be complete in three months.
There are encouraging signs. Israel is the world’s leader in vaccination, having immunized two-thirds of its elderly population. Initial results from Israel suggest that high rates of vaccination do slow the spread of the disease. If true, it would mean COVID would stop spreading even if not everyone has been vaccinated. But Israel’s priority was to get as many people vaccinated as fast as possible: their objective was not to study the disease, so scientists can only make educated guesses.
The Serrana study, though, hopes to give the world its answer. And the residents of the town are ready to do their part. One retiree said that nothing much ever happens in Serrana, but now the world’s eyes are on his hometown. Another woman said the choice of Serrana was a gift from God. Others are just happy to be vaccinated: To date , Brazil has vaccinated only three percent of its population, so immunization will be a treat for the residents of Serrana. Nobody will be forced against their will to get the vaccine, but participation is expected to be high.
Serrana was the perfect place for the experiment—for both good and bad reasons. First, it’s close to a research institute, so the logistics of administering, tracking, and studying the results would be easier for scientists. It’s about the right size—large enough to get meaningful results, but not an unwieldy metropolis of millions of people. And unfortunately, it has a high rate of infections.
A study like this would not be effective in town with no infections to begin with. So the study organizers had to find a town where enough people were getting infected to draw meaningful conclusions. People will still be able to enter and leave the city as they go about their normal business—that, in fact , is part of the experiment.
The project is codenamed “Project S”; organizers kept it secret for six months during the planning stages. They didn’t want word to get out before the project was ready to go. Even after the announcement, some people from other towns tried to get in on the action . Locals say people from other towns were trying to quickly buy or rent homes in Serrana so they could get the vaccine.
Reasons for optimism
I don’t want to jinx things, but I think—I think—we can allow ourselves some more optimism. Not just for the vaccine, but the number of cases has been falling dramatically from the last few months of 2020. I know we’ve been here before, but between the number of people who have the vaccine, the number of people already infected, it does seem like the spread is slowing, at least in the US. I am ready for this to be over.
If anyone is in Serrana, by the way, I’d love to hear what you think about this. Just shoot me a note to [email protected] or post in our Facebook group, which you can join at PlainEnglish.com/Facebook.
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