npr--2020-12-18--2 Former Obama Officials Are Crucial To Biden's Sweeping Climate Plans

2 Former Obama Officials Are Crucial To Biden 's Sweeping Climate Plans Updated at 7:45 a.m .
ET The fate of the Biden administration 's ambitious climate goals — plans that , if fully implemented , would overhaul the United States ' energy economy in the span of just 15 years — will largely rest in the hands of two longtime government officials who have obsessed on the topic for decades .
President-elect Joe Biden this week named former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy as his national climate adviser .
In that role , she 'll be the stateside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kerry , whom Biden tapped as his international climate envoy .
The two Massachusetts natives spent the second term of the Obama administration pushing to change the trajectory of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures .
Both advanced or enacted unprecedented efforts to do just that , only to see the Trump administration swiftly disassemble their policies .
McCarthy oversaw the first national standards for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants .
The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court blocked those rules from going into effect , and then the Trump administration withdrew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a key role in negotiating the Paris climate accord , only to see President Trump pull the U.S. out of the deal .
But now , the two ex-Cabinet members will return to the federal government in different positions — and with broader goals .
They 'll share intertwined assignments of not only reinstituting all the Obama-era regulations and international agreements that Trump scuttled , but then wrangling together the political , economic and technological capital needed to achieve Biden 's stated goals of a carbon-neutral energy sector in 15 years , followed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
`` We 've now squandered three and a half years '' Biden emphasized climate change more than any past Democratic presidential nominee .
He devoted multiple speeches to the topic during a summer when wildfires raged throughout the West , and the Atlantic Ocean saw so many hurricanes that meteorologists ran out of alphabetical names for the storms .
Biden and his environmental advisers share the view — widespread among climate experts and activists — that the world has an increasingly limited window to reverse course and try to curtail further global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a number of years ago that we had 12 years within which to make decisions that would avoid the worst challenges of the climate crisis , the worst effects , '' Kerry told NPR 's Morning Edition in an interview last week .
`` We 've now squandered three and a half of those years .
So we have to make up for that . ''
McCarthy 's job will be to drive policies to address climate change beyond the usual departments ' work on it , and to coordinate planning across government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a statement that McCarthy will do that work as the head of `` the newly formed White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy . ''
`` It is being treated as a systemic issue , not something uniquely given to EPA or the Department of the Interior , but something that is all about using the entire federal budget , and the strength of the entire Cabinet , to actually move this issue forward in ways that were not available to us before , '' McCarthy told NPR in an interview before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have not had this kind of base of support , so I think this administration is ready to run . ''
Intended nominees at the departments of Energy and Interior , the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality will join McCarthy and Kerry in the efforts .
Biden formally announced his climate team Thursday , calling its members `` brilliant , tested [ and ] trailblazing . ''
In his NPR interview , Kerry set some of the stakes of their work .
`` If we think migration was a challenge in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here in America on our border , '' he said , `` wait until you see what happens when places become completely unlivable , and you ca n't produce the food .
And people are fighting for a place to live , and what 's habitable . ''
Kerry 's immediate goal will be to reengage the U.S. in the international climate diplomacy it has avoided for the past four years .
That might take some convincing .
`` Countries will be wary of the United States , '' said Todd Stern , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Obama administration .
`` Not of President-elect Biden or John Kerry or people working for this administration , but wary about , they 've seen what happens in the United States when things go a certain way in elections .
You ca n't get away from that .
It 's just a reality . ''
Not only did the Trump administration withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement , but Trump 's EPA spent four years weakening and rewriting environmental regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions in vehicles , oil and gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sources .
Trump , a longtime denier of mainstream climate science , argued the regulations hurt the economy , and that a fracking-powered drilling boom created cheap fuel and high-paying jobs .
Said McCarthy : `` There is bitterness , as there should be , about the way the U.S. has behaved .
But I think that everybody has been waiting for the U.S. to rejoin . ''
The most effective way for the U.S. to overcome that international skepticism , though , is n't anything Kerry will be doing on the international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ domestically , and actually cutting greenhouse gas emissions .
`` The only way that the rest of the world takes us seriously ... is to do everything in our power to address the crisis domestically , '' said Varshini Prakash , the executive director and co-founder of the progressive and increasingly influential Sunrise Movement .
`` It will be up to us to demonstrate the priority is real , is genuine , '' acknowledged a source familiar with the Biden transition who requested anonymity .
The two have worked together for a long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Massachusetts state government during Kerry 's long tenure as one of the state 's U.S. senators .
Kerry then ran the State Department when McCarthy led the EPA , and both played a role in international climate efforts , including an agreement to phase out a powerful greenhouse gas used in refrigeration and air conditioning .
This summer , both Kerry and McCarthy sat on a task force charged with bridging various policy differences between Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders , the runner-up in the Democratic presidential primary .
The task @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and priority differences that the Biden administration will need to bridge among climate advocates .
It included members like Prakash , who criticized Biden 's initial climate platform as woefully inadequate , but also more moderate Democrats who are n't quite ready to fully walk away from fossil fuels , especially natural gas .
`` We definitely do have differences , '' Prakash said , `` and that was apparent on the task force .
Sunrise believes , as we 're looking at the science , that we have to move way faster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we do n't a lot of people are going to suffer . ''
One big difference between climate activists and Kerry is how they think about and deal with big energy companies .
Groups like Sunrise see them as the culprits who ignored and worsened climate change .
Kerry says he 's on the phone with them , talking about paths to clean energy .
The energy companies , he told NPR , `` understand that there 's money to be made in producing the products .
Anybody who has the breakthrough on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ key to the future . ''
Stern argued it makes sense for Kerry to have those conversations .
`` Nobody who knows Kerry would ever accuse him of being a go-slow , warmed-over , centrist blah blah blah .
That is not what makes this guy tick at all , '' he said .
Those sorts of talks are especially important , Stern argued , because the to-do list on the international climate front is much different than four years ago .
When Kerry was secretary of state , the main goal was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the much more important thing will be cobbling together agreements on how to meet those goals .
`` Like , '' Stern said , `` putting in place stronger standards for industries that are highly global .
So you could imagine global standards if you could negotiate a thing — things like cement , steel , plastics , chemicals .
Very polluting , very global . ''
A source familiar with the transition ticked off some of the other areas where the Biden administration will be looking to strike deals : `` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emissions from civil aviation , looking at financing . ''
Another international goal will be convincing countries like China and India to stop building new coal-fired power plants .
How their roles are intertwined And just as the domestic efforts McCarthy will coordinate could boost or undercut Kerry 's deal-crafting , any success Kerry achieves abroad could help in convincing skeptics in the U.S. that transitioning away from fossil fuels is worth the effort .
`` We already went through this , at least twice , with coal and steel in this region @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be skeptical , '' warned Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb , a moderate Democrat who also sat on the Biden-Sanders climate task force .
Lamb 's Western Pennsylvania district is on the front lines of the fracking-powered natural gas boom that has already undercut U.S. coal over the past decade and a half .
Unless China walks away from coal , he argued , any U.S. transition would be fruitless .
`` How do we get them to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from their coal-fired power plants , and not take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the process ? ''
Throughout his campaign , Biden framed his climate change agenda as something that would create , not take away , jobs .
That sales pitch will likely need to take hold for the U.S. to successfully shift its energy production at the level needed to reach the goals he 'll recommit the country to when he rejoins the Paris agreement .
And doing that will most likely mean convincing Republicans in Congress , and conservative federal judges , to go along with policies that their party has opposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years — and worked to unravel when they 've held power .
`` We do have continued escalation , '' she said , `` in terms of people 's attitude and anxiety toward climate change .
People are seeing it now like they 've never seen it before . ''

With Biden's Boost, 2 Obama Veterans Are 'Ready To Run' Climate Efforts
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Updated at 7:45 a.m. ET
The fate of the Biden administration's ambitious climate goals — plans that, if fully implemented, would overhaul the United States' energy economy in the span of just 15 years — will largely rest in the hands of two longtime government officials who have obsessed on the topic for decades.
President-elect Joe Biden this week named former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy as his national climate adviser. In that role, she'll be the stateside counterpart to former Secretary of State John Kerry, whom Biden tapped as his international climate envoy.
The two Massachusetts natives spent the second term of the Obama administration pushing to change the trajectory of ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures. Both advanced or enacted unprecedented efforts to do just that, only to see the Trump administration swiftly disassemble their policies.
McCarthy oversaw the first national standards for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court blocked those rules from going into effect, and then the Trump administration withdrew them.
Kerry, meanwhile, played a key role in negotiating the Paris climate accord, only to see President Trump pull the U.S. out of the deal.
But now, the two ex-Cabinet members will return to the federal government in different positions — and with broader goals. They'll share intertwined assignments of not only reinstituting all the Obama-era regulations and international agreements that Trump scuttled, but then wrangling together the political, economic and technological capital needed to achieve Biden's stated goals of a carbon-neutral energy sector in 15 years, followed by an entirely carbon-neutral economy by 2050.
"We've now squandered three and a half years"
Biden emphasized climate change more than any past Democratic presidential nominee. He devoted multiple speeches to the topic during a summer when wildfires raged throughout the West, and the Atlantic Ocean saw so many hurricanes that meteorologists ran out of alphabetical names for the storms.
Biden and his environmental advisers share the view — widespread among climate experts and activists — that the world has an increasingly limited window to reverse course and try to curtail further global temperature increases.
"Scientists told us a number of years ago that we had 12 years within which to make decisions that would avoid the worst challenges of the climate crisis, the worst effects," Kerry told NPR's Morning Edition in an interview last week. "We've now squandered three and a half of those years. So we have to make up for that."
McCarthy's job, as head of a newly formed White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, will be to drive policies to address climate change beyond the usual departments' work on it, and to coordinate planning across government agencies.
"It is being treated as a systemic issue, not something uniquely given to EPA or the Department of the Interior, but something that is all about using the entire federal budget, and the strength of the entire Cabinet, to actually move this issue forward in ways that were not available to us before," McCarthy told NPR in an interview before her role was reported. "We have not had this kind of base of support, so I think this administration is ready to run."
Intended nominees at the departments of Energy and Interior, the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality will join McCarthy and Kerry in the efforts. Biden formally announced his climate team Thursday, calling its members "brilliant, tested [and] trailblazing."
In his NPR interview, Kerry set some of the stakes of their work.
"If we think migration was a challenge in Europe in the last years, or here in America on our border," he said, "wait until you see what happens when places become completely unlivable, and you can't produce the food. And people are fighting for a place to live, and what's habitable."
Facing "bitterness" on the global stage
Kerry's immediate goal will be to reengage the U.S. in the international climate diplomacy it has avoided for the past four years. That might take some convincing.
"Countries will be wary of the United States," said Todd Stern, who held the climate envoy job throughout the Obama administration. "Not of President-elect Biden or John Kerry or people working for this administration, but wary about, they've seen what happens in the United States when things go a certain way in elections. You can't get away from that. It's just a reality."
Not only did the Trump administration withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement, but Trump's EPA spent four years weakening and rewriting environmental regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions in vehicles, oil and gas extraction, power plants and other polluting sources.
Trump, a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, argued the regulations hurt the economy, and that a fracking-powered drilling boom created cheap fuel and high-paying jobs.
Said McCarthy: "There is bitterness, as there should be, about the way the U.S. has behaved. But I think that everybody has been waiting for the U.S. to rejoin."
The most effective way for the U.S. to overcome that international skepticism, though, isn't anything Kerry will be doing on the international front; it will be taking action domestically, and actually cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
"The only way that the rest of the world takes us seriously ... is to do everything in our power to address the crisis domestically," said Varshini Prakash, the executive director and co-founder of the progressive and increasingly influential Sunrise Movement.
"It will be up to us to demonstrate the priority is real, is genuine," acknowledged a source familiar with the Biden transition who requested anonymity.
That makes Kerry and McCarthy's tasks increasingly codependent.
Bridging domestic gaps and looking abroad
The two have worked together for a long time. McCarthy was an environmental adviser in Massachusetts state government during Kerry's long tenure as one of the state's U.S. senators. Kerry then ran the State Department when McCarthy led the EPA, and both played a role in international climate efforts, including an agreement to phase out a powerful greenhouse gas used in refrigeration and air conditioning.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
This summer, both Kerry and McCarthy sat on a task force charged with bridging various policy differences between Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the runner-up in the Democratic presidential primary.
The task force highlighted some of the internal policy and priority differences that the Biden administration will need to bridge among climate advocates.
It included members like Prakash, who criticized Biden's initial climate platform as woefully inadequate, but also more moderate Democrats who aren't quite ready to fully walk away from fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
"We definitely do have differences," Prakash said, "and that was apparent on the task force. Sunrise believes, as we're looking at the science, that we have to move way faster than a 2050 target. And if we don't a lot of people are going to suffer."
One big difference between climate activists and Kerry is how they think about and deal with big energy companies.
Groups like Sunrise see them as the culprits who ignored and worsened climate change. Kerry says he's on the phone with them, talking about paths to clean energy.
The energy companies, he told NPR, "understand that there's money to be made in producing the products. Anybody who has the breakthrough on battery storage is going to have the key to the future."
Stern argued it makes sense for Kerry to have those conversations. "Nobody who knows Kerry would ever accuse him of being a go-slow, warmed-over, centrist blah blah blah. That is not what makes this guy tick at all," he said.
Those sorts of talks are especially important, Stern argued, because the to-do list on the international climate front is much different than four years ago.
When Kerry was secretary of state, the main goal was crafting the sweeping Paris accord. Now, the much more important thing will be cobbling together agreements on how to meet those goals.
"Like," Stern said, "putting in place stronger standards for industries that are highly global. So you could imagine global standards if you could negotiate a thing — things like cement, steel, plastics, chemicals. Very polluting, very global."
A source familiar with the transition ticked off some of the other areas where the Biden administration will be looking to strike deals: "sectoral agreements, working on shipping, emissions from civil aviation, looking at financing."
Another international goal will be convincing countries like China and India to stop building new coal-fired power plants.
How their roles are intertwined
And just as the domestic efforts McCarthy will coordinate could boost or undercut Kerry's deal-crafting, any success Kerry achieves abroad could help in convincing skeptics in the U.S. that transitioning away from fossil fuels is worth the effort.
"We already went through this, at least twice, with coal and steel in this region. So people have a right to be skeptical," warned Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, a moderate Democrat who also sat on the Biden-Sanders climate task force.
Lamb's Western Pennsylvania district is on the front lines of the fracking-powered natural gas boom that has already undercut U.S. coal over the past decade and a half.
Unless China walks away from coal, he argued, any U.S. transition would be fruitless. "How do we get them to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from their coal-fired power plants, and not take all our jobs and outcompete us economically in the process?"
Throughout his campaign, Biden framed his climate change agenda as something that would create, not take away, jobs. That sales pitch will likely need to take hold for the U.S. to successfully shift its energy production at the level needed to reach the goals he'll recommit the country to when he rejoins the Paris agreement.
And doing that will most likely mean convincing Republicans in Congress, and conservative federal judges, to go along with policies that their party has opposed in stronger and stronger terms in recent years — and worked to unravel when they've held power.
McCarthy insists this is doable.
"We do have continued escalation," she said, "in terms of people's attitude and anxiety toward climate change. People are seeing it now like they've never seen it before."


npr--2020-12-18--'Millions Left On The Table': How Cities Can Do More To Battle Rising Flood Insurance Rates

'Millions Left On The Table ' : How Cities Can Do More To Battle Rising Flood Insurance Rates William Jennings and his wife have lived in their Virginia Beach , Va. home for the last 37 years .
And their plan was to stay in it through retirement .
`` I really like my house , '' Jennings says , standing in the front yard .
`` A two-story home .
A swimming pool in the backyard . ''
But Jennings ' neighborhood has flooded more often in recent years .
His house did once , too .
His mortgage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him $ 2,336 a year and is set to increase 18 % in July .
The 72-year-old Army veteran worries that soon his home may no longer be affordable .
His wife supports selling it and moving to avoid the additional flood insurance expense .
`` Yeah , I do n't want to think about that , '' Jennings says .
`` One of my neighbors said they 'll just walk away from their home , and just leave and let the bank take it . ''
Whether Jennings keeps his house may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invests in a little-known federal program that offers sizeable flood insurance discounts .
The voluntary program , the Community Rating System , or CRS , has been around since 1990 and is meant to incentivize localities to reduce their flood risk .
It 's increasingly important as climate change fuels more frequent and severe flooding and rising sea levels , leading flood insurance premiums to rise .
But experts say many communities are n't taking full advantage , and it 's costing people .
`` This is big money , '' says Mary-Carson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ environmental non-profit Wetlands Watch .
`` You 're talking millions left on the table . ''
More than 1,500 communities nationwide participate in the federal program , according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency .
It involves a ranking system , and the highest discounts are for those living in areas with the most flood risk .
But generally , the more cities and towns do to reduce flooding and prepare people for it , the bigger insurance discounts they can earn for their residents .
For example , they can put up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do n't drown — alerting people not to drive through floodwater , '' Stiff says .
`` Having requirements for structures to be built up higher is something that earns a lot of points . ''
So can not building at all .
Darryl Cook walks through a local cypress swamp in James County , Va. , also near the coast and bordered by two rivers .
Tall , slender trees stretch high in the sky and fallen leaves cover the muddy ground .
`` This area is protected from development , '' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
`` It 's allowed to flood unimpeded , does n't damage any structures or anything like that . ''
The federal government recently rewarded James City County with a 25 % discount on flood insurance premiums .
About 1,000 people will benefit , with those facing the most flood risk saving almost $ 300 a year .
Why some places are n't doing more For all its benefits , some communities say the federal flood rating program is cumbersome , and can be a strain on limited resources .
As a result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can to help residents .
Roseville , Calif. , is the only locality in the country that receives a 45 % discount , the highest possible , according to FEMA .
Sacramento , Calif. , and Tulsa , Okla. , are among just eight cities that have increased their discounts to 40 % .
Another three localities get 35 % off flood insurance premiums .
Other cities and towns have also recently upped their commitment to the rating system , including Fort Myers Beach , FL.
, which joined the program in 1999 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sea level rise .
In October , the federal government increased the town 's discount from 15 % to 25 % .
`` We looked at it as an opportunity to try to save our residents money , '' says town manager Roger Hernstadt .
Still , many cities across the country have only done enough to earn 5 to 20 % insurance discounts , and others have just recently signed on .
Take Virginia Beach , which only got involved last year even though the coastal city has been battling sea level @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's most populated low-lying floodplains .
The federal government requires homes and businesses in high-risk flood zones to have flood insurance if they have federally-backed mortgages .
Whitney McNamara , an environmental planner with the city , says officials had to buy into the benefits of the program before the city applied .
`` Part of it for us was just , our constituents and our elected officials really started becoming more aware of the impact flooding was having on our communities , '' she says .
Virginia Beach currently has a 15 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city continues to focus on flood protections , McNamara says there are no immediate plans to improve its CRS rating .
She says she already spends about half her time on the program .
`` To get to the point that we could be scrapping for points , '' she says , `` would take a lot more than the time I have . ''
A spokeswoman for Newport News , Va. , another coastal , flood-prone city , says staffing shortages also prevented it from joining the federal flood rating program sooner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of applying now .
Roy Wright , a former head of the National Flood Insurance Program , says the discounts are increasingly important as climate-driven flooding worsens and flood insurance rates continue to go up .
Cities across the country that do n't make the Community Rating System a priority will lose out more and more , he says .
`` So a city council needs to look holistically at the value of it , because across all of their policyholders who get that discount , it really begins to add up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CEO of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety .
Wright predicts that more cities will decide it makes sense to invest in the rating system , as more residents struggle to hang on to their homes amid rising premiums .

'Millions Left On The Table': How Cities Can Help Trim Rising Flood Insurance Rates
Enlarge this image toggle caption Sam Turken/WHRO Sam Turken/WHRO
William Jennings and his wife have lived in their Virginia Beach, Va., home for the last 37 years. And their plan was to stay in it through retirement.
"I really like my house," Jennings says, standing in the front yard. "A two-story home. A swimming pool in the backyard."
But Jennings' neighborhood has flooded more often in recent years. His house did once, too. His mortgage requires flood insurance, which now costs him $2,336 a year and is set to increase 18% in July.
The 72-year-old Army veteran worries that soon his home may no longer be affordable. His wife supports selling it and moving to avoid the additional flood insurance expense.
"Yeah, I don't want to think about that," Jennings says. "One of my neighbors said they'll just walk away from their home, and just leave and let the bank take it."
Whether Jennings keeps his house may depend on how much more Virginia Beach invests in a little-known federal program that offers sizeable flood insurance discounts.
The voluntary program, the Community Rating System, or CRS, has been around since 1990 and is meant to incentivize localities to reduce their flood risk. It's increasingly important as climate change fuels more frequent and severe flooding and rising sea levels, leading flood insurance premiums to rise. But experts say many communities aren't taking full advantage, and it's costing people.
"This is big money," says Mary-Carson Stiff, who's with the Virginia environmental non-profit Wetlands Watch. "You're talking millions left on the table."
How the program works
More than 1,500 communities nationwide participate in the federal program, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It involves a ranking system, and the highest discounts are for those living in areas with the most flood risk. But generally, the more cities and towns do to reduce flooding and prepare people for it, the bigger insurance discounts they can earn for their residents.
For example, they can put up "signs that say turn around, don't drown — alerting people not to drive through floodwater," Stiff says. "Having requirements for structures to be built up higher is something that earns a lot of points."
So can not building at all.
Darryl Cook walks through a local cypress swamp in James County, Va., also near the coast and bordered by two rivers. Tall, slender trees stretch high in the sky and fallen leaves cover the muddy ground.
"This area is protected from development," says Cook, a local stormwater official. "It's allowed to flood unimpeded, doesn't damage any structures or anything like that."
The federal government recently rewarded James City County with a 25% discount on flood insurance premiums. About 1,000 people will benefit, with those facing the most flood risk saving almost $300 a year.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Sam Turken/WHRO Sam Turken/WHRO
Why some places aren't doing more
For all its benefits, some communities say the federal flood rating program is cumbersome, and can be a strain on limited resources. As a result, they're not doing all they can to help residents.
Roseville, Calif., is the only locality in the country that receives a 45% discount, the highest possible, according to FEMA. Sacramento, Calif., and Tulsa, Okla., are among just eight cities that have increased their discounts to 40%. Another three localities get 35% off flood insurance premiums.
Other cities and towns have also recently upped their commitment to the rating system, including Fort Myers Beach, FL., which joined the program in 1999 but is now doing more to address sea level rise. In October, the federal government increased the town's discount from 15% to 25%.
"We looked at it as an opportunity to try to save our residents money," says town manager Roger Hernstadt.
Still, many cities across the country have only done enough to earn 5 to 20% insurance discounts, and others have just recently signed on.
Take Virginia Beach, which only got involved last year even though the coastal city has been battling sea level rise and has one of the state's most populated low-lying floodplains. The federal government requires homes and businesses in high-risk flood zones to have flood insurance if they have federally-backed mortgages.
Whitney McNamara, an environmental planner with the city, says officials had to buy into the benefits of the program before the city applied.
"Part of it for us was just, our constituents and our elected officials really started becoming more aware of the impact flooding was having on our communities," she says.
Virginia Beach currently has a 15% discount. But, while the city continues to focus on flood protections, McNamara says there are no immediate plans to improve its CRS rating. She says she already spends about half her time on the program. "To get to the point that we could be scrapping for points," she says, "would take a lot more than the time I have."
A spokeswoman for Newport News, Va., another coastal, flood-prone city, says staffing shortages also prevented it from joining the federal flood rating program sooner, but it's in the process of applying now.
Roy Wright, a former head of the National Flood Insurance Program, says the discounts are increasingly important as climate-driven flooding worsens and flood insurance rates continue to go up. Cities across the country that don't make the Community Rating System a priority will lose out more and more, he says.
"So a city council needs to look holistically at the value of it, because across all of their policyholders who get that discount, it really begins to add up," says Wright, who's currently the CEO of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.
Wright predicts that more cities will decide it makes sense to invest in the rating system, as more residents struggle to hang on to their homes amid rising premiums.


npr--2020-12-18--2020 May Be The Hottest Year On Record. Here's The Damage It Did

2020 May Be The Hottest Year On Record .
Here 's The Damage It Did With just a few weeks left , 2020 is in a dead-heat tie for the hottest year on record .
But whether it claims the top spot misses the point , climate scientists say .
There is no shortage of disquieting statistics about what is happening to the Earth .
The hottest decade on record is coming to a close , with the last five years being the hottest since 1880 .
2020 is just two-hundredths of a degree cooler than 2016 , the hottest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than it was in the 20th century , and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are still rising .
The future will be even hotter , although humans , through the choices governments , corporations and individuals make , will decide exactly how much .
That means more years like 2020 , with increasingly powerful hurricanes , more intense wildfires , less ice and longer heat waves .
The average yearly number of $ 1 billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. has quadrupled in the last three decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been 16 climate-driven disasters that caused at least $ 1 billion in damage each .
`` How many times can we say the word 'unprecedented ' ? ''
says Kristina Dahl , climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists .
`` This is not just something theoretical that we 're predicting .
It 's something that we are living through and that we 're already beginning to see . ''
Climate-driven disasters — hurricanes , wildfires , heat waves , droughts and floods — affect every region of the U.S. , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disproportionately .
Around the world , climate change is exacerbating inequality .
As President-elect Joe Biden assembles a new administration that promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help people across the country , and around the world , adapt to global warming , NPR 's Climate Team asked climate scientists what lessons can be learned at the end of another hot year .
Dangerous heat waves that do n't let up Weather reports across the Southwest this year featured one number , over and over : 100 degrees .
That 's because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heat , breaking long-term temperature records .
Phoenix , Arizona experienced a record-breaking 145 days above 100 degrees , the repeated , sustained heat waves made worse by a lack of rain .
The city also had 15 days above 115 degrees , double the previous record .
`` Basically almost everything set records , '' says Marvin Percha , meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Phoenix .
`` I 've lived here a long time .
I grew up here in the 70s and I 've never seen anything quite like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequences .
Phoenix also broke the record for the number of heat-related deaths , with almost 300 people dying .
Some were killed directly by the heat , while others suffered from cardiac and respiratory problems triggered by heat stress .
Cities , with their vast amounts of concrete , also experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas - what 's known as the `` urban heat island '' effect .
Nighttime temperatures are warming faster than daytime temperatures , which provides less respite from the heat .
Other cities like Palm Springs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the number of days above 100 and 90 degrees , respectively .
Climate scientists say even small changes in average temperature translate to large increases in extremes .
Drought and heat feed a vicious spiral , drying out soils and plants which then lead to hotter air temperatures around them .
`` Certainly with the overall warmer Earth it makes it more likely to get these extremes temperatures , '' Percha says .
The Arctic is heating up fast .
But exactly how fast ?
Jackie Grebmeier has been traveling to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years .
A climate scientist at the University of Maryland , she studies how the oceans are changing , and what that means for people and animals .
This year the pandemic got in the way .
It was October before Grebmeier and a pared down group of Arctic scientists made it to the Bering Strait near Alaska .
Grebmeier expected much colder weather than she usually experiences during summer research trips , but was surprised by the warm conditions she found .
`` All the long johns we brought , we did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
`` We saw not one piece of ice . ''
At one point , the scientists on the research vessel saw a container ship coming south through the Bering Strait .
It had started in Canada and was headed for South Korea , via the Arctic Ocean .
They also found evidence of a large algae bloom off the coast of northern Alaska .
Usually , such blooms only occur in the summer .
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth , according to the federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That means sea ice is melting earlier in the Spring and freezing later in the fall .
Permanently frozen ground is melting , and wildfires in boreal forests and Arctic shrublands are getting more frequent and severe .
There was less Arctic sea ice this October than any previous October on record .
That comes as no surprise to many people who live in the Arctic .
`` You know , climate change for indigenous people is not anything new .
It 's maybe new for science to say , 'Yeah the Arctic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sea ice , ' `` says Mellisa Johnson , the director of the Bering Sea Elders Group , which is made up of representatives from more than 40 communities on the Alaska coast .
Johnson says many indigenous people are already adapting hunting practices to accommodate for less sea ice , and the new ways of gathering traditional food are being passed down to younger generations .
But the climate models that scientists use to predict the future do not accurately predict how quickly ice in the Arctic is melting .
`` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reproducing what we 're seeing in the Arctic , '' says Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen , a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen .
Faced with obviously rapid Arctic warming , scientists are trying to figure out why that is .
Climate models are particularly crucial in the Arctic because there is less directly observed data available .
In a 2020 study , Hesselbjerg Christensen and his colleagues analyzed how quickly the Arctic is warming now compared to dramatic temperature changes in the distant past , such as when the last Ice Age @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happening now is comparably fast .
`` The amount of warming that 's taking place is quite comparable to what happened at the top of Greenland like 30,000 years ago , '' he says .
`` This is almost as abrupt as anything gets . ''
Now , scientists like Hesselbjerg Christensen are trying to understand what that means for the future , and whether the past could help them design climate models that reflect what 's actually happening in the Arctic .
`` It 's not about what happens this year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's about what happens next year and the year after and the year after that . ''
The West is no stranger to fires , but this year 's blazes seemed relentless .
More than nine million acres burned and 17,000 homes and buildings were destroyed .
Three states experienced the largest wildfires in their recorded history : California , Oregon and Colorado .
The pattern was unsettlingly similar across those states : extreme hot weather and high winds created explosive infernos that sent people fleeing their homes with just minutes to spare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crews were stretched thin with little relief .
No state could spare extra personnel to help their Western neighbors .
Millions of people inhaled unhealthy air for weeks , as the smoke spread to places far and wide that had not had wildfires .
Extreme fires can have many causes that lead to their destructiveness .
Many ecosystems are overgrown with brush , after years of land management practices that focused on extinguishing fires rather than letting them clear out vegetation when safe to do so .
At the same time , millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where fires are a regular part of the ecology .
But climate scientists say the warming climate set the stage for fires to get out of hand .
California experienced the hottest October on record .
Many parts of the Southwest had the driest late summer ever recorded .
That created an extremely `` thirsty '' atmosphere — a key metric that scientists track to measure fire danger .
When the air is hot and dry , it acts like a sponge , drawing moisture out of soils and plants .
That dry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conditions for explosive fires .
Climate scientists say as temperatures continue to rise , the West will see more and more days with high fire danger due to a `` thirstier '' atmosphere .
`` That 's what we saw this year , '' says Dan McEvoy , climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center and Desert Research Institute .
`` We saw a record high and it was almost double compared to the previous record .
So we 're seeing this play out in real time . ''
With the potential for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say Western communities must reduce the risk where they can .
That means changing their relationship with fire by using it as a tool .
Setting controlled burns in the winter season can help reduce overgrown fuels , as Native American tribes have done for millennia .
Making homes and buildings more resistant to fire with better building materials gives them a chance to survive wildfires or at least slow them down .
While that 's required in risky areas in California , many Western states have failed to institute wildfire building codes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past year , evacuation plans are more critical than ever .
`` Fire on the landscape in the West is normal , '' McEvoy says .
`` We need that fire .
But the thing that 's changing is the rate that they spread and how quickly they become these large mega-fires . ''
Hotter ocean water is bad news in so many ways Ocean warming was also on full display in 2020 , and it was messy .
Sections of the Indian Ocean , the Pacific and the Caribbean all had their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Earth 's ocean area was much warmer than average .
Hotter water meant more powerful storms .
Warm water on the ocean surface helps storms gain energy as they form , which leads to more destructive wind and storm surge .
Hot ocean water also endows some storms with enormous amounts of moisture that falls as rain when the storm hits land .
Record-breaking heat in the Bay of Bengal helped power a devastating cyclone that hit India and Bangladesh in May .
By the time the Atlantic Hurricane season began in June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mexico was also heating up .
That helped fuel a record-breaking number of rapidly intensifying hurricanes whose wind speeds got about 35 miles per hour faster in 24 hours or less .
Wind speed indicates how powerful a hurricane is , so the 10 storms that rapidly intensified in 2020 all gained a lot of power very quickly , which made it more difficult for people in their path to prepare .
Climate scientists expected hotter water to lead to more rapidly intensifying storms , but 2020 was still surprisingly prolific .
`` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no one could have believed , '' says Rebecca Morss , a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research .
`` Watching those hurricanes rapidly intensify in the Gulf [ of Mexico ] is just crazy . ''
The hot water was also bad news for fisheries .
Fish and other marine creatures are moving farther and farther to find water that is the appropriate temperature for them , according to a study by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published this year .
That 's disruptive for the migrating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other animals that prey on marine species .

2020 May Be The Hottest Year On Record. Here's The Damage It Did
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ralph Freso/Getty Images Ralph Freso/Getty Images
With just a few weeks left, 2020 is in a dead-heat tie for the hottest year on record. But whether it claims the top spot misses the point, climate scientists say. There is no shortage of disquieting statistics about what is happening to the Earth.
The hottest decade on record is coming to a close, with the last five years being the hottest since 1880. 2020 is just two-hundredths of a degree cooler than 2016, the hottest year ever recorded. The Earth is nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than it was in the 20th century, and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are still rising.
The future will be even hotter, although humans, through the choices governments, corporations and individuals make, will decide exactly how much.
That means more years like 2020, with increasingly powerful hurricanes, more intense wildfires, less ice and longer heat waves. The average yearly number of $1 billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. has quadrupled in the last three decades. As of October 2020, there had been 16 climate-driven disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage each.
"How many times can we say the word 'unprecedented'?" says Kristina Dahl, climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "This is not just something theoretical that we're predicting. It's something that we are living through and that we're already beginning to see."
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Climate-driven disasters — hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods — affect every region of the U.S., but poor people and poor places suffer disproportionately. Around the world, climate change is exacerbating inequality.
As President-elect Joe Biden assembles a new administration that promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help people across the country, and around the world, adapt to global warming, NPR's Climate Team asked climate scientists what lessons can be learned at the end of another hot year.
Dangerous heat waves that don't let up
Weather reports across the Southwest this year featured one number, over and over: 100 degrees.
That's because many cities endured lengthy stretches of relentless heat, breaking long-term temperature records. Phoenix, Arizona experienced a record-breaking 145 days above 100 degrees, the repeated, sustained heat waves made worse by a lack of rain. The city also had 15 days above 115 degrees, double the previous record.
"Basically almost everything set records," says Marvin Percha, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Phoenix. "I've lived here a long time. I grew up here in the 70s and I've never seen anything quite like this."
Heat can have deadly consequences. Phoenix also broke the record for the number of heat-related deaths, with almost 300 people dying. Some were killed directly by the heat, while others suffered from cardiac and respiratory problems triggered by heat stress.
Cities, with their vast amounts of concrete, also experience higher temperatures than surrounding areas — what's known as the "urban heat island" effect. Nighttime temperatures are warming faster than daytime temperatures, which provides less respite from the heat. Other cities like Palm Springs and Sacramento, Calif. also broke their records for the number of days above 100 and 90 degrees, respectively.
Climate scientists say even small changes in average temperature translate to large increases in extremes. Drought and heat feed a vicious spiral, drying out soils and plants which then lead to hotter air temperatures around them.
"Certainly with the overall warmer Earth it makes it more likely to get these extremes temperatures," Percha says.
The Arctic is heating up fast. But exactly how fast?
Enlarge this image toggle caption Manuel Ernst/NASA Earth Observatory Manuel Ernst/NASA Earth Observatory
Jackie Grebmeier has been traveling to the Arctic every summer for more than 30 years. A climate scientist at the University of Maryland, she studies how the oceans are changing, and what that means for people and animals.
This year the pandemic got in the way. It was October before Grebmeier and a pared down group of Arctic scientists made it to the Bering Strait near Alaska. Grebmeier expected much colder weather than she usually experiences during summer research trips, but was surprised by the warm conditions she found. "All the long johns we brought, we didn't need them," she says. "We saw not one piece of ice."
At one point, the scientists on the research vessel saw a container ship coming south through the Bering Strait. It had started in Canada and was headed for South Korea, via the Arctic Ocean. They also found evidence of a large algae bloom off the coast of northern Alaska. Usually, such blooms only occur in the summer.
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth, according to the federal government's 2020 Arctic Report Card. That means sea ice is melting earlier in the spring and freezing later in the fall. Permanently frozen ground is melting, and wildfires in boreal forests and Arctic shrublands are getting more frequent and severe. There was less Arctic sea ice this October than any previous October on record.
That comes as no surprise to many people who live in the Arctic. "You know, climate change for indigenous people is not anything new. It's maybe new for science to say, 'Yeah the Arctic is warming, there's a lack of sea ice,' " says Mellisa Johnson, the director of the Bering Sea Elders Group, which is made up of representatives from more than 40 communities on the Alaska coast.
Johnson says many indigenous people are already adapting hunting practices to accommodate for less sea ice, and the new ways of gathering traditional food are being passed down to younger generations.
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But the climate models that scientists use to predict the future do not accurately predict how quickly ice in the Arctic is melting.
"Many models seem to have difficulties in reproducing what we're seeing in the Arctic," says Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen.
Faced with obviously rapid Arctic warming, scientists are trying to figure out why that is. Climate models are particularly crucial in the Arctic because there is less directly observed data available.
In a 2020 study, Hesselbjerg Christensen and his colleagues analyzed how quickly the Arctic is warming now compared to dramatic temperature changes in the distant past, such as when the last Ice Age ended, and found that what's happening now is comparably fast. "The amount of warming that's taking place is quite comparable to what happened at the top of Greenland like 30,000 years ago," he says. "This is almost as abrupt as anything gets."
Now, scientists like Hesselbjerg Christensen are trying to understand what that means for the future, and whether the past could help them design climate models that reflect what's actually happening in the Arctic.
"It's not about what happens this year," Hesselbjerg Christensen says. "It's about what happens next year and the year after and the year after that."
Wildfires shattered records across the West
Enlarge this image toggle caption Samuel Caorum/AFP via Getty Images Samuel Caorum/AFP via Getty Images
The West is no stranger to fires, but this year's blazes seemed relentless. More than nine million acres burned and 17,000 homes and buildings were destroyed. Three states experienced the largest wildfires in their recorded history: California, Oregon and Colorado.
The pattern was unsettlingly similar across those states: extreme hot weather and high winds created explosive infernos that sent people fleeing their homes with just minutes to spare. As multiple fires burned, fire-fighting crews were stretched thin with little relief. No state could spare extra personnel to help their Western neighbors. Millions of people inhaled unhealthy air for weeks, as the smoke spread to places far and wide that had not had wildfires.
Extreme fires can have many causes that lead to their destructiveness. Many ecosystems are overgrown with brush, after years of land management practices that focused on extinguishing fires rather than letting them clear out vegetation when safe to do so. At the same time, millions of people have moved into fire-prone landscapes where fires are a regular part of the ecology.
But climate scientists say the warming climate set the stage for fires to get out of hand. California experienced the hottest October on record. Many parts of the Southwest had the driest late summer ever recorded.
That created an extremely "thirsty" atmosphere — a key metric that scientists track to measure fire danger. When the air is hot and dry, it acts like a sponge, drawing moisture out of soils and plants. That dry vegetation is highly flammable, creating the conditions for explosive fires.
Loading...
Climate scientists say as temperatures continue to rise, the West will see more and more days with high fire danger due to a "thirstier" atmosphere.
"That's what we saw this year," says Dan McEvoy, climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center and Desert Research Institute. "We saw a record high and it was almost double compared to the previous record. So we're seeing this play out in real time."
With the potential for catastrophic fires only increasing, fire experts say Western communities must reduce the risk where they can. That means changing their relationship with fire by using it as a tool. Setting controlled burns in the winter season can help reduce overgrown fuels, as Native American tribes have done for millennia.
Making homes and buildings more resistant to fire with better building materials gives them a chance to survive wildfires or at least slow them down. While that's required in risky areas in California, many Western states have failed to institute wildfire building codes.
Given the speed of wildfires this past year, evacuation plans are more critical than ever.
"Fire on the landscape in the West is normal," McEvoy says. "We need that fire. But the thing that's changing is the rate that they spread and how quickly they become these large mega-fires."
Hotter ocean water is bad news in so many ways
Ocean warming was also on full display in 2020, and it was messy.
Sections of the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Caribbean all had their hottest years ever. Most of the Earth's ocean area was much warmer than average.
Hotter water meant more powerful storms. Warm water on the ocean surface helps storms gain energy as they form, which leads to more destructive wind and storm surge. Hot ocean water also endows some storms with enormous amounts of moisture that falls as rain when the storm hits land.
Notes The water in the Gulf of Mexico was consistently hotter than normal during peak hurricane season. The hot water helped fuel a record-breaking number of powerful storms.
Record-breaking heat in the Bay of Bengal helped power a devastating cyclone that hit India and Bangladesh in May. By the time the Atlantic Hurricane season began in June, the water in the Gulf of Mexico was also heating up.
That helped fuel a record-breaking number of rapidly intensifying hurricanes whose wind speeds got about 35 miles per hour faster in 24 hours or less. Wind speed indicates how powerful a hurricane is, so the 10 storms that rapidly intensified in 2020 all gained a lot of power very quickly, which made it more difficult for people in their path to prepare.
Climate scientists expected hotter water to lead to more rapidly intensifying storms, but 2020 was still surprisingly prolific. "This season has just been something that no one could have believed," says Rebecca Morss, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Watching those hurricanes rapidly intensify in the Gulf [of Mexico] is just crazy."
The hot water was also bad news for fisheries. Fish and other marine creatures are moving farther and farther to find water that is the appropriate temperature for them, according to a study by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published this year. That's disruptive for the migrating animals themselves, and for humans and other animals that prey on marine species.


npr--2020-12-18--If COVID-19 Vaccines Bring An End To The Pandemic, America Has Immigrants To Thank

If COVID-19 Vaccines Bring An End To The Pandemic , America Has Immigrants To Thank Hungarian-born scientist Katalin Karikó believed in the potential of messenger RNA — the genetic molecule at the heart of two new COVID-19 vaccines — even when almost no one else did .
Karikó began working with RNA as a student in Hungary .
When funding for her job there ran out , Kariko immigrated to Philadelphia in 1985 .
Over the years , she 's been rejected for grant after grant , threatened with deportation and demoted from her faculty job by a university that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Through it all , Karikó just kept working .
If new COVID-19 vaccines help life in the U.S. get back to normal next year , the nation will have many immigrants like Karikó to thank .
Scientists and investors born outside of the U.S. played crucial roles in the development of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna .
It 's a remarkable vindication for the argument — often made by the biotech industry — that innovation depends on the free movement of people and ideas .
Now Karikó is a senior vice president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Pfizer to make the first COVID-19 vaccine to get emergency authorization in the U.S. BioNTech is a company based in Germany and led by immigrants from Turkey .
Immigrants are playing key roles in nearly every aspect of the vaccine effort in the U.S .
Even the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed , the Trump administration 's vaccine distribution program , is an immigrant — Moncef Slaoui , the former head of GlaxoSmithKline 's vaccines department .
President Trump often takes credit for the record-breaking speed of vaccine development — and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , '' as he puts it .
But people in the biotech industry say that American genius depends on a pool of global talent .
`` We are an intellectual magnet for the best of the best from around the world , '' said Jeremy Levin , CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization , the U.S. industry trade group .
Levin , who was born in South Africa , says high-skilled immigrants are attracted to the U.S. for its great educational institutions — and for its biotech industry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
`` We in America are willing to take a chance , '' Levin said .
`` It is the willingness to fail in the endeavour to find a medicine that could make the difference to millions of people around the world .
And that characteristic is what 's drawn so many from abroad ... who are just going to have a go at it . ''
Levin says nearly one-third of the biotech workforce here was born outside the U.S .
If you also count the children of immigrants , he says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Levin worries it 's gotten harder in recent years for those people to get here .
The Trump administration has placed more restrictions on immigrants who want to study and work in the U.S .
The president says he wants to protect American jobs , and often talks about immigrants as a threat and a burden .
That 's how he talks about the coronavirus , as well , referring to it as the `` China virus . ''
`` It 's a very racist comment , '' said Dr. Victor Dzau , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Medicine , a nonprofit in Washington .
He 's an expert on global health who was born in China .
`` We all recognize this appears to be a blame game , right ?
To divert your responsibility by saying that somebody else gave it to us , '' Dzau said .
`` A virus does not see any borders . ''
The virus has spread around the world , killing at least 1.6 million people , including more than 300,000 in the United States .
Now the U.S. has developed two vaccines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country .
Both use the messenger RNA technology pioneered in part by Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania .
At the time , Karikó says , she applied for dozens of grants to support her work .
`` I never get the grant .
All of them were rejected , '' she said .
`` Nobody was really interested in messenger RNA therapy . ''
As the rejection letters piled up , Karikó was demoted from her faculty position .
But she persisted .
`` When you do science , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does not exist .
So as long as you have an idea and some experiments to do , you know , it is fun , '' she said .
Karikó and her colleagues at Penn eventually solved some of the key problems that were holding the technology back .
This week , Moderna 's vaccine became the second to win an FDA advisory panel 's recommendation for emergency authorization .
The company , which was started 10 years ago in Boston , is also led by immigrants .
`` This country has done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a big part of that is people who bring in their own capabilities , their own dreams , aspirations , '' said Noubar Afeyan , Moderna 's chairman .
He was an early investor in the company , and also runs his own venture capital firm , Flagship Pioneering .
Afeyan was born in Lebanon , lived in Montreal , and trained at MIT .
He thinks there 's a link between the immigrant experience and innovation .
`` I think of innovation as a form of intellectual immigration , '' Afeyan said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you .
You face unrecognizable challenges .
You take nothing for granted .
You do n't feel like in your new country people owe you anything . ''
It took scientists at Moderna and BioNTech less than a year to bring these new vaccines to market .
It was an unprecedented race against time — made possible by decades of work from some of the best minds in the world .

If COVID-19 Vaccines Bring An End To The Pandemic, America Has Immigrants To Thank
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jessica Kourkounis Jessica Kourkounis
Hungarian-born scientist Katalin Karikó believed in the potential of messenger RNA — the genetic molecule at the heart of two new COVID-19 vaccines — even when almost no one else did.
Karikó began working with RNA as a student in Hungary. When funding for her job there ran out, Kariko immigrated to Philadelphia in 1985. Over the years, she's been rejected for grant after grant, threatened with deportation and demoted from her faculty job by a university that saw her research as a dead end.
Through it all, Karikó just kept working.
If new COVID-19 vaccines help life in the U.S. get back to normal next year, the nation will have many immigrants such as Karikó to thank. Scientists and investors born outside the U.S. played crucial roles in the development of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. It's a remarkable vindication for the argument — often made by the biotech industry — that innovation depends on the free movement of people and ideas.
Now Karikó is a senior vice president at BioNTech, the company that partnered with Pfizer to make the first COVID-19 vaccine to get emergency authorization in the United States. BioNTech is a company based in Germany and led by immigrants from Turkey.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Drew Angerer/Getty Images Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Immigrants are playing key roles in nearly every aspect of the vaccine effort in the United States. Even the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's vaccine distribution program, is an immigrant — Moncef Slaoui, the former head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccines department.
President Trump often takes credit for the record-breaking speed of vaccine development — and for "unleashing America's scientific genius," as he puts it.
But people in the biotech industry say that American genius depends on a pool of global talent.
"We are an intellectual magnet for the best of the best from around the world," said Jeremy Levin, CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the U.S. industry trade group.
Levin, who was born in South Africa, said high-skilled immigrants are attracted to the U.S. for its great educational institutions — and for its biotech industry that's willing to take big risks.
"We in America are willing to take a chance," Levin said. "It is the willingness to fail in the endeavor to find a medicine that could make the difference to millions of people around the world. And that characteristic is what's drawn so many from abroad ... who are just going to have a go at it."
Enlarge this image toggle caption Nir Elias/Reuters Nir Elias/Reuters
Levin said nearly one-third of the biotech workforce here was born outside the United States. If you also count the children of immigrants, he said, it's roughly half. But Levin worries it's gotten harder in recent years for those people to get here.
The Trump administration has placed more restrictions on immigrants who want to study and work in this country. Immigration hardliners accuse pharmaceutical companies and other tech-driven industries of using foreign workers to hold down wages.
The president says he wants to protect American jobs and often talks about immigrants as a threat and a burden. That's how he talks about the coronavirus as well, referring to it as the "China virus."
"It's a very racist comment," said Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. He's an expert on global health who was born in China.
"We all recognize this appears to be a blame game, right? To divert your responsibility by saying that somebody else gave it to us," Dzau said. "A virus does not see any borders."
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jörg Carstensen/picture alliance via Getty Image Jörg Carstensen/picture alliance via Getty Image
The virus has spread around the world, killing at least 1.6 million people, including more than 300,000 in the United States. Now the U.S. has developed two vaccines, and doses are being shipped around the country.
Both use the mRNA technology pioneered in part by Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, Karikó said, she applied for dozens of grants to support her work.
"I never get the grant. All of them were rejected," she said. "Nobody was really interested in messenger RNA therapy."
As the rejection letters piled up, Karikó was demoted from her faculty position. But she persisted. "When you do science, you know, the whole wide world just does not exist. So as long as you have an idea and some experiments to do, you know, it is fun," she said.
Karikó and her colleagues at Penn eventually solved some of the key problems holding the technology back.
This week, Moderna's vaccine became the second to win a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel's recommendation for emergency authorization. The company, which was started 10 years ago in Boston, is also led by immigrants.
"This country has done amazing things. And I think that a big part of that is people who bring in their own capabilities, their own dreams, aspirations," said Noubar Afeyan, Moderna's chairman. He was an early investor in the company and also runs his own venture capital firm, Flagship Pioneering.
Afeyan was born in Lebanon, lived in Montreal and trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said he thinks there's a link between the immigrant experience and innovation.
"I think of innovation as a form of intellectual immigration," Afeyan said. "You leave your comforts behind you. You face unrecognizable challenges. You take nothing for granted. You don't feel like in your new country people owe you anything."
It took scientists at Moderna and BioNTech less than a year to bring these new vaccines to market. It was an unprecedented race against time — made possible by decades of work from some of the best minds in the world.


npr--2020-12-18--I Felt Fine, But Tested Positive For The Coronavirus. What's That Really Mean?

I Felt Fine , But Tested Positive For The Coronavirus .
What 's That Really Mean ?
When they called to tell me my COVID-19 test was positive , I thought there must have been a mistake .
I felt perfectly fine , and in the long months of the pandemic my husband , Jeff , and I had been behaving the way much of the United States had : hyper-vigilant about where we went and who we saw , and careful to follow the recommended public health precautions .
Besides , Jeff had taken the same test at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Since we did almost everything together , how could you explain that ?
`` It 's a PCR test — they 're very accurate , '' said the woman on the phone from the Delaware Board of Public Health when I expressed some disbelief .
We had taken the test not because we suspected anything but because , having driven from our home in New York City to Delaware for a weekend break , we wanted to be good citizens and follow New York 's rules regarding travel out of state when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone went down a list of the things I needed to do : Stay home .
Do n't leave the apartment for any reason .
And isolate from Jeff .
That last bit surprised me — my husband and I certainly had n't been isolating from one another between taking the test on Nov. 7 and getting the results late on Nov. 11 , so what was the point in doing so now ?
If I was going to expose him , surely the most dangerous period had been those four crucial days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bed we shared , the sips of bourbon we exchanged , and the three-plus hours in the car together , windows closed , during our drive home to New York on Nov. 9 after our weekend away .
As a science journalist who 's written about emerging viruses for 30 years , I knew enough to ask the Delaware public health rep whether the lab report included a Ct number .
Experts have been saying that the Ct ( cycle threshold ) number is crucial to understanding how the coronavirus spreads and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offer helpful information not only for epidemiologists but for individuals , too — those of us desperate to predict , as I suddenly was , the likely trajectory of our illness after a positive test result .
The Ct number tells you how many amplification cycles through the PCR machine are required before the lab can get a detectable level of viral RNA .
If the lab had to go through the cycle just 20 times or so , that means you started out with a relatively high viral load , and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 'd get pretty sick .
( Though even that is conjecture ; no one has kept good track of the relationship between viral load and severity of symptoms , so what we 're left with here is mostly an educated guess based on correlations seen in some observational studies . )
If , instead , it took more rounds of amplification — say , 35 or 40 cycles — to be able to detect virus in your sample , maybe that means you started off with very little virus at all .
According @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times last summer , the labs that keep track of Ct numbers tend to report them at 37 to 40 — meaning they run a sample through 37 to 40 amplification cycles , if needed , before deciding whether to call it positive or negative .
That could mean at least some of the people deemed positive for COVID-19 started off with minuscule amounts of virus .
And while there 's no direct evidence that people with those high cycle numbers would be less sick than those with low numbers , there 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be less contagious .
The Times analysis found , among other things , that the New York state laboratory uses a Ct of 40 to make a positive designation .
If it used a Ct of 30 as a cutoff instead , the Times calculated , 63 % of the people identified as positive would instead be told that no virus could be detected — in other words , they 'd be told they did not have COVID-19 .
I was curious to know on which side of that boundary my own test @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had never heard of the Ct number .
She said I would get a follow-up call in two or three days from a Delaware contact tracer , and I could ask them .
And with that , I entered into a real-world demonstration of how little we really know about the coronavirus .
To begin with , no one from Delaware ever called me for a list of my contacts — an indication of how , even before Thanksgiving , COVID-19 was already outpacing public health officials ' ability to corral it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jeff and I had been cocooning , but even cocoons are permeable , and though we 'd dutifully worn masks in public , we had been in range of about half a dozen people in the previous week .
I was left to alert those contacts on my own .
In addition , every time I tried to understand more about my own situation , I ran into a stone wall of incomplete information .
Which is a terrifying prospect at this moment in the pandemic — as transmission , illness , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up exponentially .
After the call from Delaware , I put on my mask and made up the bed in the spare room , preparing for my 10 days of isolation inside our home , as the CDC recommends .
Even though the fact that I felt perfectly fine made it all seem a bit surreal , Jeff and I decided to assume the test was right and to operate as if I really was infected , which meant staying at different ends of the apartment from each other .
We 're both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remotely — I 'm a freelance , he 's a college professor — so quarantining did n't have any financial repercussions for us .
`` No , it 's not wrong ; PCRs are very accurate , '' my doctor said on a video call when I asked her whether the test might have been a false-positive .
She said symptoms would probably show up within the next week .
I told her that was not reassuring .
`` Anything I can do to try to stave them off ? ''
I asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vitamin D , I thought .
Or get a humidifier ?
How about my oxygen level ; should I keep track of things with the pulse oximeter we bought months ago in our first round of pandemic panic ?
`` Nope , '' she answered , a bit too cheerfully , I thought , though it was hard to tell for sure with her mask on .
My doctor seemed to think symptoms would be showing up soon , which was a scary prospect , and she told me to schedule another tele-visit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to feel really sick .
I went to bed the night of Nov. 11 completely symptom-free , yet anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop .
All the reading and reporting I had been doing since March suddenly became intensely personal .
I was no longer just playing the odds by following public health advice about `` mitigation , '' trying to limit spread in the highly unlikely event that I was spewing virus from my mouth and nose .
This was the real thing now .
For my husband 's sake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the virus I knew I was carrying .
I wore a mask , all the time .
I opened all the windows in the apartment even though it was cold outside .
I washed my hands so maniacally that the little diamond ring I inherited from my grandmother shone as if it were brand new .
I closed the cover on the toilet whenever I flushed .
On Nov. 12 I still felt fine .
I contacted the people I had interacted with just before my test : two couples in Delaware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a distance ; and our housekeeper in New York , who had been in the apartment for a few hours on Nov. 4 and had worn a mask , as had Jeff and I. I told them I was sorry to have endangered them unwittingly .
They all went for COVID-19 tests .
My doctor thought I was probably infected on Nov. 3 or 4 , but was n't that just a guess ?
Maybe it was Nov. 1 , when I 'd opted for in-person early voting .
Maybe it was Oct. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spent a few hours with our daughter , son-in-law and two young granddaughters , ages 2 and 5 , in their Brooklyn neighborhood .
We 'd been mostly outside and mostly masked during the visit , but when it started to rain we had moved our bagel brunch into their garage-cum-party room , leaving all the doors and windows open .
After they heard I 'd tested positive , my daughter and son-in-law got tested , too , along with their 5-year-old .
But maybe it was none of these times .
Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this was just the long-simmering tail of a completely hidden infection .
As far as the CDC knows , tests for COVID-19 can still be positive up to three months after the symptoms resolve .
So can you count three months backward , too , for someone whose symptoms never appeared ?
This is when it would have been really handy to know the Ct number for my test .
On Nov. 13 I still felt fine , though I kept my mask on during a Zoom call with three old college friends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus I might be emitting into the apartment .
I wore my mask during a call with both our daughters on Nov. 14 , too , when we Zoomed in to do the Sunday Times crossword puzzle as a group .
`` You 're not going to infect us through the screen , '' my older daughter teased , but I kept the mask on anyway , I guess for the sake of Jeff , who was eating some of his meals in the room I was calling from .
I really , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ infected ; research finds men tend to get sicker with this coronavirus infection than women do .
All my contacts tested negative for COVID-19 .
That was reassuring .
But not completely so , since most of them used a rapid antigen test that can have disconcertingly high rates of both false-negatives and false-positives .
Once again , the details of trying to chart one individual 's experience with coronavirus revealed the patchiness of our ability to track the virus down , to test reliably for its presence , and to stay ahead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symptoms was beginning to feel , to be honest , too good to be true .
Why should I be this lucky ?
Harboring a virus that has flattened America , causing disease , death and endless despair for hundreds of thousands of us .
It made no sense that I should be spared the worst of its effects , when so many others with this diagnosis have been so grievously harmed .
I was n't even an especially good candidate for getting off easy .
I 'm 67 — part of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death from COVID-19 .
And while I 'm basically healthy and do n't have medical conditions that can be associated with a bad COVID-19 outcome , my aging immune system is without doubt more sluggish than it used to be .
I researched further , trying to explain my inexplicable good fortune .
Epidemiologists do n't know much about what differentiates people with symptoms from those without , partly because asymptomatic cases — who the CDC estimates make up some 40 % of people with COVID-19 nationwide — tend to be invisible .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ wear a mask ?
Studies suggest that the proportion of asymptomatic cases is higher in regions where a greater proportion of people are wearing masks in public .
Maybe masks reduce the amount of virus you take in when you do get exposed , and maybe less virus means fewer symptoms .
Or maybe my luck could be traced to other habits .
I encountered one study , for instance , that indicated that getting certain vaccines might offer some protection from COVID-19 as an unexpected benefit .
Two weeks before my positive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and back in September I had gotten a flu shot .
Could one of those immunizations have been relevant ?
I 'm just spitballing here .
But , in a way , that 's what even the experts have to do in many cases .
Though they 're learning all the time , they still know very little about exactly how this virus new to humans behaves in the context of any one person 's particular mix of genes , physiology , environmental exposure or any of a number of other factors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hit so much harder than others .
Jeff went for a second PCR test on Nov. 14 and , because of the overload of testing facilities in New York , he was still waiting for results on Nov. 17 when I emerged from my isolation period .
I 'd never developed any symptoms .
When Jeff 's results came back the next day — negative for COVID-19 — we were greatly relieved , but also , perhaps perversely , a little disappointed .
Now what lessons were we supposed to draw ?
Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week of isolation had protected him .
Maybe my lack of symptoms showed I had a very low viral load and was never really going to pass it on .
Or maybe my own test was a false-positive — perhaps from contamination or a mix-up in the Delaware lab ?
— and I never had COVID-19 at all .
Three weeks after my positive COVID-19 test , I walked over to a testing site in Manhattan to get my blood drawn for an antibody test , just to see my story through .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and one more bit of data I was n't quite sure how to interpret .
Antibody tests have a high rate of both false-negatives and false-positives .
Combined with my positive PCR test for the virus , I would have considered a positive antibody test to be confirmation that I really had at one time been infected with the coronavirus , no matter how healthy I felt all along .
But a negative antibody test ?
That presented more of a puzzle .
It could mean I was never infected with the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just slow in building up a supply of antibodies , but they would show up eventually .
Or it could mean , as I find myself musing now at 3 a.m. , that I did in fact have an asymptomatic case , and I 'm silently harboring a nice healthy store of T-cells — another protective form of immune cells that most commercial labs do n't look for yet .
This last bit , I realize , is no doubt just middle-of-the-night wishful thinking .
But there 's one thing I do know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Despite a global scientific effort that has led to a spectacular burst of new information this past year about a previously unknown pathogen , we can say very little with confidence about how the coronavirus will behave inside any one of us .
We 're still unable to tell a fully fleshed-out story about a particular individual 's encounter .
Not the beginning , about how and when the virus was transmitted ; nor the middle , about what symptoms it will cause ; nor , especially and most distressingly , anything about @ @ @ @ @

I Felt Fine, But Tested Positive For The Coronavirus. What's That Really Mean?
Enlarge this image Dion MBD for NPR Dion MBD for NPR
When they called to tell me my COVID-19 test was positive, I thought there must have been a mistake. I felt perfectly fine, and in the long months of the pandemic my husband, Jeff, and I had been behaving the way much of the United States had: hyper-vigilant about where we went and who we saw, and careful to follow the recommended public health precautions.
Besides, Jeff had taken the same test at the same time, and his was negative. Since we did almost everything together, how could you explain that?
"It's a PCR test — they're very accurate," said the woman on the phone from the Delaware Board of Public Health when I expressed some disbelief. We had taken the test not because we suspected anything but because, having driven from our home in New York City to Delaware for a weekend break, we wanted to be good citizens and follow New York's rules regarding travel out of state when we returned.
The woman on the phone went down a list of the things I needed to do: Stay home. Don't leave the apartment for any reason. And isolate from Jeff.
That last bit surprised me — my husband and I certainly hadn't been isolating from one another between taking the test on Nov. 7 and getting the results late on Nov. 11, so what was the point in doing so now? If I was going to expose him, surely the most dangerous period had been those four crucial days when I was supposedly shedding the coronavirus in the bed we shared, the sips of bourbon we exchanged, and the three-plus hours in the car together, windows closed, during our drive home to New York on Nov. 9 after our weekend away.
As a science journalist who's written about emerging viruses for 30 years, I knew enough to ask the Delaware public health rep whether the lab report included a Ct number. Experts have been saying that the Ct (cycle threshold) number is crucial to understanding how the coronavirus spreads and how it causes disease. It can offer helpful information not only for epidemiologists but for individuals, too — those of us desperate to predict, as I suddenly was, the likely trajectory of our illness after a positive test result.
The Ct number tells you how many amplification cycles through the PCR machine are required before the lab can get a detectable level of viral RNA. If the lab had to go through the cycle just 20 times or so, that means you started out with a relatively high viral load, and it would make sense to expect that you'd get pretty sick. (Though even that is conjecture; no one has kept good track of the relationship between viral load and severity of symptoms, so what we're left with here is mostly an educated guess based on correlations seen in some observational studies.)
If, instead, it took more rounds of amplification — say, 35 or 40 cycles — to be able to detect virus in your sample, maybe that means you started off with very little virus at all.
According to an analysis by The New York Times last summer, the labs that keep track of Ct numbers tend to report them at 37 to 40 — meaning they run a sample through 37 to 40 amplification cycles, if needed, before deciding whether to call it positive or negative. That could mean at least some of the people deemed positive for COVID-19 started off with minuscule amounts of virus. And while there's no direct evidence that people with those high cycle numbers would be less sick than those with low numbers, there's good evidence that they would at least be less contagious.
The Times analysis found, among other things, that the New York state laboratory uses a Ct of 40 to make a positive designation. If it used a Ct of 30 as a cutoff instead, the Times calculated, 63% of the people identified as positive would instead be told that no virus could be detected — in other words, they'd be told they did not have COVID-19.
I was curious to know on which side of that boundary my own test fell.
The woman on the phone had never heard of the Ct number. She said I would get a follow-up call in two or three days from a Delaware contact tracer, and I could ask them.
And with that, I entered into a real-world demonstration of how little we really know about the coronavirus.
To begin with, no one from Delaware ever called me for a list of my contacts — an indication of how, even before Thanksgiving, COVID-19 was already outpacing public health officials' ability to corral it. I did have a few contacts — Jeff and I had been cocooning, but even cocoons are permeable, and though we'd dutifully worn masks in public, we had been in range of about half a dozen people in the previous week. I was left to alert those contacts on my own.
In addition, every time I tried to understand more about my own situation, I ran into a stone wall of incomplete information. That is a terrifying prospect at this moment in the pandemic — as transmission, illness, and death rates from COVID-19 continue to ramp up exponentially.
After the call from Delaware, I put on my mask and made up the bed in the spare room, preparing for my 10 days of isolation inside our home, as the CDC recommends. Even though the fact that I felt perfectly fine made it all seem a bit surreal, Jeff and I decided to assume the test was right and to operate as if I really was infected, which meant staying at different ends of the apartment from each other. We're both lucky enough to be able to work remotely — I freelance, he's a college professor — so quarantining didn't have any financial repercussions for us.
"No, it's not wrong; PCRs are very accurate," my doctor said on a video call when I asked her whether the test might have been a false-positive. She said symptoms would probably show up within the next week. I told her that was not reassuring. "Anything I can do to try to stave them off?" I asked her.
Maybe I should take some Vitamin D, I thought. Or get a humidifier? How about my oxygen level; should I keep track of things with the pulse oximeter we bought months ago in our first round of pandemic panic?
"Nope," she answered, a bit too cheerfully, I thought, though it was hard to tell for sure with her mask on. My doctor seemed to think symptoms would be showing up soon, which was a scary prospect, and she told me to schedule another tele-visit if (when?) I started to feel really sick.
I went to bed the night of Nov. 11 completely symptom-free, yet anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop.
All the reading and reporting I had been doing since March suddenly became intensely personal. I was no longer just playing the odds by following public health advice about "mitigation," trying to limit spread in the highly unlikely event that I was spewing virus from my mouth and nose. This was the real thing now. For my husband's sake, I was trying to spread less of the virus I knew I was carrying.
I wore a mask, all the time. I opened all the windows in the apartment even though it was cold outside. I washed my hands so maniacally that the little diamond ring I inherited from my grandmother shone as if it were brand new. I closed the cover on the toilet whenever I flushed.
On Nov. 12 I still felt fine. I contacted the people I had interacted with just before my test: two couples in Delaware, in each instance outside and at a distance; and our housekeeper in New York, who had been in the apartment for a few hours on Nov. 4 and had worn a mask, as had Jeff and I. I told them I was sorry to have endangered them unwittingly. They all went for COVID-19 tests.
My doctor thought I was probably infected on Nov. 3 or 4, but wasn't that just a guess? Maybe it was Nov. 1, when I'd opted for in-person early voting. Maybe it was Oct. 31, when Jeff and I'd spent a few hours with our daughter, son-in-law and two young granddaughters, ages 2 and 5, in their Brooklyn neighborhood. We'd been mostly outside and mostly masked during the visit, but when it started to rain we had moved our bagel brunch into their garage-cum-party room, leaving all the doors and windows open. After they heard I'd tested positive, my daughter and son-in-law got tested, too, along with their 5-year-old.
But maybe it was none of these times. Maybe I got infected months ago, and this was just the long-simmering tail of a completely hidden infection. As far as the CDC knows, tests for COVID-19 can still be positive up to three months after the symptoms resolve. So can you count three months backward, too, for someone whose symptoms never appeared? This is when it would have been really handy to know the Ct number for my test.
On Nov. 13 I still felt fine, though I kept my mask on during a Zoom call with three old college friends, just to reduce the amount of virus I might be emitting into the apartment. I wore my mask during a call with both our daughters on Nov. 14, too, when we Zoomed in to do the Sunday Times crossword puzzle as a group.
"You're not going to infect us through the screen," my older daughter teased, but I kept the mask on anyway, I guess for the sake of Jeff, who was eating some of his meals in the room I was calling from. I really, really didn't want him to get infected; research finds men tend to get sicker with this coronavirus infection than women do.
All my contacts tested negative for COVID-19. That was reassuring. But not completely so, since most of them used a rapid antigen test that can have disconcertingly high rates of both false-negatives and false-positives. Once again, the details of trying to chart one individual's experience with the coronavirus revealed the patchiness of our ability to track the virus down, to test reliably for its presence, and to stay ahead of its devastation.
My lack of symptoms was beginning to feel, to be honest, too good to be true. Why should I be this lucky? Harboring a virus that has flattened America, causing disease, death and endless despair for hundreds of thousands of us. It made no sense that I should be spared the worst of its effects, when so many others with this diagnosis have been so grievously harmed.
I wasn't even an especially good candidate for getting off easy. I'm 67 — part of the cohort of people at higher risk of death from COVID-19. And while I'm basically healthy and don't have medical conditions that can be associated with a bad COVID-19 outcome, my aging immune system is without doubt more sluggish than it used to be.
I researched further, trying to explain my inexplicable good fortune. Epidemiologists don't know much about what differentiates people with symptoms from those without, partly because asymptomatic cases — who the CDC estimates make up some 40% of people with COVID-19 nationwide — tend to be invisible.
Did I remain symptom-free because I always wear a mask? Studies suggest that the proportion of asymptomatic cases is higher in regions where a greater proportion of people are wearing masks in public. Maybe masks reduce the amount of virus you take in when you do get exposed, and maybe less virus means fewer symptoms.
Or maybe my luck could be traced to other habits. I encountered one study, for instance, that indicated that getting certain vaccines might offer some protection from COVID-19 as an unexpected benefit. Two weeks before my positive test I had gotten a pneumonia vaccine, and back in September I had gotten a flu shot. Could one of those immunizations have been relevant?
I'm just spitballing here. But, in a way, that's what even the experts have to do in many cases. Though they're learning all the time, they still know very little about exactly how this virus new to humans behaves in the context of any one person's particular mix of genes, physiology, environmental exposure or any of a number of other factors that could help explain why some are hit so much harder than others.
Jeff went for a second PCR test on Nov. 14 and, because of the overload of testing facilities in New York, he was still waiting for results on Nov. 17 when I emerged from my isolation period. I'd never developed any symptoms.
When Jeff's results came back the next day — negative for COVID-19 — we were greatly relieved, but also, perhaps perversely, a little disappointed. Now what lessons were we supposed to draw?
Maybe the caution we'd used during my week of isolation had protected him. Maybe my lack of symptoms showed I had a very low viral load and was never really going to pass it on. Or maybe my own test was a false-positive — perhaps from contamination or a mix-up in the Delaware lab? — and I never had COVID-19 at all.
Three weeks after my positive COVID-19 test, I walked over to a testing site in Manhattan to get my blood drawn for an antibody test, just to see my story through. It was negative — another disappointment, and one more bit of data I wasn't quite sure how to interpret.
Antibody tests have a high rate of both false-negatives and false-positives. Combined with my positive PCR test for the virus, I would have considered a positive antibody test to be confirmation that I really had at one time been infected with the coronavirus, no matter how healthy I felt all along. But a negative antibody test? That presented more of a puzzle.
It could mean I was never infected with the coronavirus. Or it could mean I was just slow in building up a supply of antibodies, but they would show up eventually. Or it could mean, as I find myself musing now at 3 a.m., that I did in fact have an asymptomatic case, and I'm silently harboring a nice healthy store of T-cells — another protective form of immune cells that most commercial labs don't look for yet. This last bit, I realize, is no doubt just middle-of-the-night wishful thinking.
But there's one thing I do know, in light of this experience: Despite a global scientific effort that has led to a spectacular burst of new information this past year about a previously unknown pathogen, we can say very little with confidence about how the coronavirus will behave inside any one of us.
We're still unable to tell a fully fleshed-out story about a particular individual's encounter. Not the beginning, about how and when the virus was transmitted; nor the middle, about what symptoms it will cause; nor, especially and most distressingly, anything about how it will end.