Variants
The “California” variants (B.1.427/B.1.429) are more transmissible and vaccines are less effective against them, but they are less dangerous than B.1.1.7. Don’t lose sleep over them.
Vaccines
This paper reports that mRNA vaxxes sure seem safe for pregnant women.
There is a vaccine, SpFN, developed at Baylor, which they say will protect against SARS and COVID-19. (This, I think, means that it is likely to also protect against a bunch of the “common cold” coronaviruses, though they do not promise that.) They are partnering with Biological E, a huge Indian manufacturer of low-cost drugs, who announced that they are finishing with their Phase 1/2 trial, and expect to be done with their Phase 3 trial and delivering doses by August. This is important because they believe they can make around 70 million doses per month.
I don’t mention it a lot, but there is still very active development of vaccines. Just today, I found out about a French vaccine and an Iranian vaccine, in addition to SpFN above.
The world is going to have SO. MUCH. VAX. by the end of the year.