11-year-old girl shot in the face at Chicago gas station

An 11-year-old girl was hospitalized after being shot in the face at a West Pullman gas station.

Recommended Stories

  • Nasa successfully flies small helicopter on Mars

    The Ingenuity drone completes the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

  • Head of NY school that suspended teacher over ‘white shaming’ comments recorded agreeing with him

    Paul Rossi accuses the school of ‘demonising’ white people in its curriculum

  • Who is Derek Chauvin, the officer charged with murdering George Floyd?

    He was on the Minneapolis police force for nearly 20 years and had previously documented incidents of using force with arrestees

  • Man with Adam Toledo when he was shot by police out of jail

    The man who was allegedly with a 13-year-old shortly before the child was shot to death by a Chicago police officer has been bailed out of jail, the Cook County Sheriff’s Department revealed Monday. Ruben Roman, 21, was placed on electronic monitoring Saturday after posting a $15,000 bond in the case involving Adam Toledo. Surveillance video released last week by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates Chicago police shootings at a passing vehicle the morning of March 29, while Adam Toledo stood near to him.

  • Are COVID Vaccine Side Effects a Good Sign?

    Photo: GettyIf someone gets a headache or feels a bit under the weather after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, it’s become common to hear them say something like “Oh, it just means my immune system is really working hard.” On the flip side, when people don’t notice any side effects, they sometimes worry the shot isn’t doing its job or their immune system isn’t reacting at all.Is there any link between what you can notice after a vaccine and what’s happening on the cellular level inside your body? Robert Finberg is a physician who specializes in infectious diseases and immunology at the Medical School at the University of Massachusetts. He explains how this perception doesn’t match the reality of how vaccines work.What does your body do when you get a vaccine?Your immune system responds to the foreign molecules that make up any vaccine via two different systems.The initial response is due to what’s called the innate immune response. This system is activated as soon as your cells notice you’ve been exposed to any foreign material, from a splinter to a virus. Its goal is to eliminate the invader. White blood cells called neutrophils and macrophages travel to the intruder and work to destroy it.This first line of defense is relatively short-lived, lasting hours or days.The second line of defense takes days to weeks to get up and running. This is the long-lasting adaptive immune response. It relies on your immune system’s T and B cells that learn to recognize particular invaders, such as a protein from the coronavirus. If the invader is encountered again, months or even years in the future, it’s these immune cells that will recognize the old enemy and start generating the antibodies that will take it down.In the case of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, it takes approximately two weeks to develop the adaptive response that brings long-lasting protection against the virus.Be Very, Very Skeptical of These ‘Bad News’ Vaccine ReportsWhen you get the vaccine shot, what you’re noticing in the first day or two is part of the innate immune response: your body’s inflammatory reaction, aimed at quickly clearing the foreign molecules that breached your body’s perimeter.It varies from person to person, but how dramatic the initial response is does not necessarily relate to the long-term response. In the case of the two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, well over 90 percent of people immunized developed the protective adaptive immune response while fewer than 50 percent developed any side effects, and most were mild.You may never know how strongly your body’s adaptive immune response is gearing up.The bottom line is you can’t gauge how well the vaccine is working within your body based on what you can detect from the outside. Different people do mount stronger or weaker immune responses to a vaccine, but post-shot side effects won’t tell you which you are. It’s the second, adaptive immune response that helps your body gain vaccine immunity, not the inflammatory response that triggers those early aches and pains.What are side effects, anyway?Side effects are normal responses to the injection of a foreign substance. They include things like fever, muscle pain and discomfort at the injection site, and are mediated by the innate immune response.Neutrophils or macrophages in your body notice the vaccine molecules and produce cytokines—molecular signals that cause fever, chills, fatigue and muscle pain. Doctors expect this cytokine reaction to happen any time a foreign substance is injected into the body.In studies where neither recipients nor researchers knew which individuals were getting the mRNA vaccine or a placebo, approximately half of people aged 16 to 55 who received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine developed a headache after the second dose. This reaction may relate to the vaccine—but a quarter of people who received just a placebo also developed a headache. So in the case of very common symptoms, it can be quite difficult to attribute them to the vaccine with any certainty.Researchers anticipate some reports of side effects. Adverse events, on the other hand, are things that physicians do not expect to happen as a result of the vaccine. They would include organ failure or serious damage to any part of the body.The blood clots that triggered the U.S. to pause distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are a very rare event, apparently happening with one-in-a-million frequency. Whether they are definitely caused by the vaccine is still under investigation—but if scientists conclude they are, blood clots would be an extremely rare side effect.What component in the shot causes side effects?The only “active ingredient” in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is the mRNA instructions that tell the recipient’s cells to build a viral protein. But the shots have other components that help the mRNA travel inside your body.To get the vaccine’s mRNA into the vaccinated person’s cells where it can do its job, it must evade enzymes in the body that would naturally destroy it. Researchers protected the mRNA in the vaccine by wrapping it in a bubble of lipids that help it avoid destruction. Other ingredients in the shots—like polyethylene glycol, which is part of this lipid envelope—could cause allergic responses.If I feel sick after my shot, does that signal strong immunity?Scientists haven’t identified any relationship between the initial inflammatory reaction and the long-term response that leads to protection. There’s no scientific proof that someone with more obvious side effects from the vaccine is then better protected from COVID-19. And there’s no reason that having an exaggerated innate response would make your adaptive response any better.Both the authorized mRNA vaccines provided protective immunity to over 90 percent of recipients, but fewer than 50 percent reported any reaction to the vaccine and far fewer had severe reactions.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • US House condemns China over Hong Kong crackdown in near-unanimous vote

    Republican Thomas Massie was the lone member to vote against the resolution

  • Guide mauled to death by grizzly bear near Yellowstone National Park

    Animal attacked while trying to protect food source, say police

  • Balancing act: Dutch PM eases lockdown amid infection rise

    Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced a significant easing in his country's months-long coronavirus lockdown Tuesday, calling it a delicate balancing act as infections remain stubbornly high. The decision to cautiously relax restrictions reflects difficult choices being made in many countries as lockdown fatigue grows even as positive cases keep rising. “We really see the tension between the grim reality in the here and now in the hospitals and at the same time that cautious, optimistic outlook,” Rutte said.

  • The Hornets are missing their shot creators after latest loss to Knicks

    The Hornets have now lost five of their past six games.

  • Derek Chauvin faces up to 40 years in jail after being found guilty on all murder charges

    Jury comes to its decision following high-profile trial

  • Asian American CNN producer zip-tied by Minnesota police and asked if she can speak English, lawyer says

    Carolyn Sung spent more than two hours in jail before her lawyers were able to get her released

  • Tesla: Elon Musk suggests Autopilot not to blame for fatal crash

    One victim was found in the front passenger seat and the other was in the back after the accident in Texas.

  • Negotiators see signs of progress in Iran nuclear talks

    Diplomats working in Vienna on a solution to bringing the United States back into the nuclear deal with Iran and world powers are taking a break from talks to consult with their leaders amid continued signs of progress, Russia's delegate said Tuesday. Mikhail Ulyanov said after a meeting of the deal's so-called Joint Commission of senior officials with representatives from France, Germany, Britain, China and Iran that they had noted "with satisfaction of the progress in negotiations to restore the nuclear deal." “The Commission will meet again early next week.”

  • 'We cannot wait': Latino groups in Illinois call for DOJ probe into police shooting of Adam Toledo

    The group, which includes the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois and the Pilsen Law Center, called on the DOJ to investigate.

  • Hungarian cake shop serves up sweet COVID shots

    This Hungarian cake shop is serving up an antidote to vaccine anxiety(SOUNDBITE) (Hungarian) CONFECTIONER, KATALIN BENKO, SAYING: "It was important for us to do lots so we can show that here people have a choice, there is no registration, there are no side-effects. Anyone can try these as the only possible side effect would be a little permanent smile on the face and good mood."These vaccines are filled with jellies in different colors and flavorsSinopharm mousse is sweet and sourAstraZeneca is flavored with lemonand Pfizer tastes like matcha tea(SOUNDBITE) (Hungarian) CONFECTIONER, KATALIN BENKO, SAYING: "We, as a cake shop, do not want to make a campaign for or against, we just want to bring some cheerfulness into our everyday lives."

  • Hornet LaMelo Ball thought injury was ‘nothing too big.’ Month later, he’s almost back

    Charlotte Hornets rookie star LaMelo Ball discusses his recovery from a fractured wrist.

  • House Call: Embracing My Outdoor Persona

    We're getting outdoorsy on Clever this week Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • India coronavirus: Delhi announces lockdown as Covid cases surge

    With record daily spikes all of last week, the Indian capital is now the worst-hit city in the country.

  • From Breonna to Tamir to Eric: What happens to police officers who kill Black people

    String of law enforcement officers acquitted or not faced charges in high-profile killings

  • The state of Washington DC statehood: What House Democrats are proposing and why it will probably fail

    Democrats call it fixing systemic inequality that is critical to achieving racial justice. Republicans call it a power grab to pack Congress, writes Justin Vallejo