Month: January 2021

Enlarge / The immune response involves a lot of moving parts. (credit: BSIP/Getty Images)

There's still a lot of uncertainty about how exactly the immune system responds to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But what's become clear is that re-infections are still very rare, despite an ever-growing population of people who were exposed in the early days of the pandemic. This suggests that, at least for most people, there is a degree of long-term memory in the immune response to the virus.

But immune memory is complicated and involves a number of distinct immune features. It would be nice to know which ones are engaged by SARS-CoV-2, since that would allow us to better judge the protection offered by vaccines and prior infections, and to better understand whether the memory is at risk of fading. The earliest studies of this sort all involved very small populations, but there are now a couple that have unearthed reasons for optimism, suggesting that immunity will last at least a year, and perhaps longer. But the picture still isn't as simple as we might like.

Only a memory

The immune response requires the coordinated activity of a number of cell types. There's an innate immune response that is triggered when cells sense they're infected. Various cells present pieces of protein to immune cells to alert them to the identity of the invader. B cells produce antibodies, while different types of T cells perform functions like coordinating the response and eliminating infected cells. Throughout this all, a variety of signaling molecules modulate the strength of the immune attack and induce inflammatory responses.

Enlarge / Dr. Rochelle Walensky, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to head the Centers for Disease Control. (credit: Getty | Chip Somodevilla)

Midday today, January 20, Dr. Rochelle Walensky will take over as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and one of her top priorities will be to try to undo all the harms done to the agency by the Trump administration.

“How is it that I make sure that the people who are there—these incredible scientists, these incredible civil servants for their entire career—understand and feel the value that we should be giving them? They have been diminished. I think they’ve been muzzled, that science hasn’t been heard,” Walensky said in a brief, but wide-ranging interview with JAMA Tuesday. “This top-tier agency—world renowned—hasn’t really been appreciated over the last four years and really markedly over the last year. So, I have to fix that.”

Part of her plan to do that is unmuzzling those scientists and getting their science out to the public where it can make a difference. And that blends into the next challenge: “We obviously need to get this country out of COVID and the current pandemic crisis,” she said. And that will also entail increasing communication with the public, as well as state and local health authorities and members of Congress.

Enlarge / CentOS used to be the preferred way to get RHEL compatibility at no cost. CentOS is gone now—but Red Hat is extending no-cost options for RHEL further than ever before. (credit: Red Hat / DFCisneros)

Last month, Red Hat caused a lot of consternation in the enthusiast and small business Linux world when it announced the discontinuation of CentOS Linux.

Long-standing tradition—and ambiguity in Red Hat's posted terms—led users to believe that CentOS 8 would be available until 2029, just like the RHEL 8 it was based on. Red Hat's early termination of CentOS 8 in 2021 cut eight of those 10 years away, leaving thousands of users stranded.

CentOS Stream

Red Hat's December announcement of CentOS Stream—which it initially billed as a "replacement" for CentOS Linux—left many users confused about its role in the updated Red Hat ecosystem. This week, Red Hat clarifies the broad strokes as follows: