Tag Archives: Joel Eissenberg

Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Geneticist In 1998, I went to Moscow for the first time to speak at a summer course sponsored by the Russian Academy. The week before I went, we were on vacation and one morning, I heard the NPR reporter say: “Today, the Ruble lost 100% of its value.” That, of course, would mean that the Russian currency was completely worthless. The next day, she apologized and explained that the Ruble...

Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Geneticist The Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson famously acknowledged in a Meet the Press interview: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” This observation applies to the advice from medical authorities such as the CDC and WHO during the COVID pandemic. Some members of the public are fond of pillorying these agencies for having published...

Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Upfront Blog For Christmas 2021, Linda gave me a copy of “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland” by Mark Kruger. The title certainly grabbed my attention. Having read it, there’s somewhat less than meets the eye here. The reason I never heard of this before is that the “commune” was very brief and poorly organized, and the history has been mostly ignored, since the historical impact on St. Louis...

Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology While vaccination reduces the probability of new variants; sadly, there are selfish citizens among us who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Their belief in a decision only affecting themselves. This belief is false. Failing to get vaccinated increases the chances of infecting others and of hosting a more dangerous variant. The latest data I’ve seen shows that even though...

Cringeworthy, are the numbers of people who still are unvaccinated and believe they will not be stricken by Covid. Hospitals, doctors, nurses and the staff are at critical mass again. Meanwhile courts continue to block mandatory vaccinations on the premise it is their right to become infected and endanger others. And Republicans are cheering on their supporters to resist anything which may prevent Covid. Cringworthy; VP Kamala Harris In an...

Blogger and Commenter Professor Joel Essenberg addresses Covid variants being called mutations. As a geneticist, I am troubled by the promiscuous use of the word “mutation” to describe amino acid or nucleotide differences from a reference sequence. In nearly all cases, there is no known functional significance attached to these differences. Accordingly, the differences are best referred to as “variants,” not mutations. I’ve had my genome...

Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Years ago, I was visiting Halle in the former East Germany and my host took me to the nearby town of Leipzig. While walking through town, he stopped at the shop window of a coin collecting store that displayed the defunct East German 50- and 100-Mark notes. My host remarked “Now you see why we loved Marx and Engels so much.” Growing up during the Cold War, I’m very conscious of how...

Joel Eissenberg, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology I got the Moderna vaccine as part of the phase III clinical trial back in August and September 2020. Although it was technically a blinded trial, I knew from my symptoms after the second shot I was in the vaccine arm and not the placebo arm of the clinical trial. Nevertheless, I got myself tested for the spike antibody and confirmed it. Indeed, the levels were over eight...

Prof. Joel Eissenberg has a new post up considering people’s immunity to Covid and what it consists of after vaccination. COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter? (nature.com), September 17, 2021, Elie Dolgin, We can say circulating antibodies do matter for protection from COVID-19. With the innate immune response, they represent the frontline response in a viral challenge. Often forgotten in the durable immunity...

“Preliminary Analysis of Safety and Immunogenicity of a SARS-CoV-2 Variant Vaccine Booster,” medRxiv preprint Authors: Kai Wu1*, Angela Choi1*, Matthew Koch1*, LingZhi Ma1 , Anna Hill1 , Naveen Nunna1 , Wenmei Huang1 , Judy Oestreicher1 , Tonya Colpitts1 , Hamilton Bennett1 , Holly Legault1 , Yamuna Paila1 , Biliana Nestorova1 , Baoyu Ding 1 , Rolando Pajon1 , Jacqueline M Miller1 , Brett Leav1 , Andrea Carfi1 , Roderick McPhee1#, Darin K...