Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Biophysics

Second Department

Economics

Reader 1

Sarah Marzen

Reader 2

Darren Filson

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

This thesis investigates two interconnected aspects of COVID-19: the policy impact of booster access restrictions in the United States announced in August 2025 and the molecular mechanisms governing therapeutic binding. In the first essay, I use national CDC vaccination-intent data by age category and corresponding COVID-NET hospitalization records from September 2023 to April 2025 to estimate the relationship between the intent to receive a booster and hospitalizations. The estimated elasticity of this relationship is -1.246 (statistically significant at the 5% level), which indicates that a 1% increase in the number of individuals expressing intent corresponds to a 1.246% decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations. The policy analysis uses the econometric results to estimate the effects of restricting COVID-19 booster eligibility to adults aged 65 and older or those with qualifying conditions. The results indicate that such restrictions could lead to over 640,000 additional hospitalizations, 44,920 deaths, and $7.2 billion in healthcare costs annually, underscoring the population-level consequences of reduced vaccine accessibility.

This thesis also analyzes the role cooperative and synergistic binding dynamics play in the efficacy of COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies and antiviral therapeutics across major SARS-CoV-2 variants. Antivirals demonstrate stable Hill coefficients near or above unity, indicating largely variant-independent mechanisms, while monoclonal antibodies exhibit reduced cooperativity and affinity with later Omicron sublineages. Together, these findings illustrate how restrictive vaccine policies heighten reliance on therapeutics and demonstrate that understanding binding dynamics is essential for developing variant-resilient treatments and guiding future COVID-19 strategy.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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