Coronavirus Vaccines Are Not New, Cattle Already Have Their Own
Written by Sarah Gibides
Edited by Emily Fucarino
March 21, 2022
Edited by Emily Fucarino
March 21, 2022
Nearly one year into a global pandemic, scientists studied the infection process of SARS-CoV-2 to create effective vaccines that were available to most Americans by April 2021. However, many Americans are still skeptical about the severity of SARS-CoV-2 infections and the safety of the vaccines. Some individuals feel the risk of an adverse vaccine reaction outweighs the risks of infection. To improve everyone’s understanding of this newly emerged disease, it is imperative to look at the virus’ phylogeny. The phylogenetic tree diagram shows how closely living organisms are related and their common ancestor.
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the sarbecovirus subfamily and is part of the wider betacoronavirus family, which includes the human coronavirus OC43 (HCoV-OC43), canine respiratory coronavirus (CRCoV), and bovine coronavirus (BCoV). The latter three belong to the embecovirus subfamily (Szczepanski et al., 2019). Even though these viruses are closely related, they have different hosts and infection processes. HCoV-OC43 causes the common cold, CRCoV has links to kennel cough, and BCoV generally causes severe disease in the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts of cattle. SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can both produce flu-like symptoms in humans (Szczepanski et al., 2019).
SARS-CoV-2 and BCoV are different from the rest in that they have vaccines available for use by the public. The efficacy of the BioNTech, Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccine has been determined to be 95%. Fatigue, headache, and pain at the injection site were the most common side effects (Polack et al., 2020). Similarly, SARS-CoV-2 infections can result in fatigue, with other common symptoms including shortness of breath, fever/chills, and loss of taste and smell (Polack et al., 2020). Deaths did occur during this study, but not as a result of the vaccines or the virus itself. It should be noted that the average age of the participants was 52 and the severity of disease from a SARS-CoV-2 infection depends on the physical state of the subject, with old age being a significant risk factor (Polack et al., 2020).
With longer-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection now being studied, implications have been applied relating to the effects of the closely related SARS-CoV. The most common potential long-term effects include severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, coronary heart disease, and myocardial infarction (Higgins et al., 2020). As mentioned, the BioNTech, Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective against SARS-CoV-2, and consequently, these long-term health issues. Severe breakthrough cases do occur, however. It is highly likely, 96%, that those individuals have co-morbidities. This includes hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney and lung disease, dementia, and cancer (Brosh-Nissimov et al., 2021). Estimated vaccine effectiveness seven days after the second dose of the BioNTech, Pfizer vaccine is 92% for documented infection, 94% for symptomatic Covid-19, 87% for hospitalization, and 92% for severe Covid-19 (Dagan et al., 2021). Given the vaccine’s effectiveness on multiple accounts, it is questionable why there is so much hesitancy nationwide.
On the other hand, there is not as much scrutiny when choosing to give cattle their vaccines against BCoV, as farmers are concerned about the quality and safety of their products. Providing vaccinations will also decrease the likelihood of losing the herd to disease, which would negatively impact profits. Nor is there much outrage if their animals happen to catch a breakthrough case. The BCoV vaccine proves to provide economic, medical, and epidemiological importance to farmers (Arenas et al., 2021).
Given the BioNTech, Pfizer vaccine’s strong efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 infections and its related complications, as well as the fact that coronavirus vaccines are already in use, the question remains why certain Americans refuse to get vaccinated.
References
Arenas, A., et.al. (2021). Bovine coronavirus immune milk against COVID-19. Frontiers in Immunology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2021.637152
Brosh-Nissimov, T., et.al. (2021). BNT162B2 vaccine breakthrough: Clinical characteristics of 152 fully vaccinated hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Israel. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 27(11), 1652–1657. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2021.06.036
Dagan, N., et.al. (2021). BNT162B2 mrna covid-19 vaccine in a nationwide mass vaccination setting. New England Journal of Medicine, 384(15), 1412–1423. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2101765
Higgins, V., et.al. (2020). Covid-19: From an acute to chronic disease? potential long-term health consequences. Critical Reviews in Clinical Laboratory Sciences, 58(5), 297–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408363.2020.1860895
Polack, F. P., et.al. (2020). Safety and efficacy of the BNT162B2 mrna covid-19 vaccine. New England Journal of Medicine, 383(27), 2603–2615. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2034577
Szczepanski, A., et.al. (2019). Canine respiratory coronavirus, bovine coronavirus, and human coronavirus OC43: Receptors and attachment factors. Viruses, 11(4), 328. https://doi.org/10.3390/v11040328
Image Source: “Phylogeny of Orthocoronaviruses” by So Nakagawa and Takayuki Miyazawa licensed under CC BY 4.0/ rotated and cropped from the original image