I think it's largely too early to say (in the sense that it has yet to be thoroughly researched in vaxx'd areas). It's clearly taken over the population of infections in South Africa but they're rolling with fairly low vax rates (I have seen a few figures reported but < 40%).
There are some protein/spike characteristics of this variant which alarm scientists who think it might evade vax-generated antibodies better--i.e. alpha/delta-targeting vax antibodies may provide less resistance to this one.
So on the one hand it //could be// worse than Delta but I am personally waiting for more data to flow out (esp. beyond SA).
It also, in early estimates, has a higher infectivity rate than the Delta variant, which is disquieting because Delta was already about as contagious as chicken pox.
Numbers this early can be very misleading, but anecdotes have cropped up about infections occurring from one hotel room to another, possibly through the HVAC system, which is not a durability trick that previous variants were believed to have.
My understanding is that this virus has a mutated spike protein, i.e. a different "outside shell". This spike protein is what gives the virus its ability to attach to human cells, and also what most vaccines "expose" to your immune system to teach it how to recognize COVID-19.
The difference in this variant's spike protein might have effect, among other things, on the ability of the immune system of a person that has been vaccinated to recognize the virus, so there's potential for a much decreased response/efficacy of the vaccines. However this is pure speculation at this point.
Update: earlier this year it aws speculated that the beta mutation might have increased infectivity and/or the ability to better elude the immune response; that variant eventually died out, and delta is now the prevalent one. It might be a similar case, but it's hard to tell yet, and it's of course better to err on the side of caution.
Given the low level of vaccination in the region, I have to wonder if the mutations are in response to something else in the environment rather than the virus working around vaccination induced immunity. That area has extraordinarily high rates of HIV. Is it possible that the virus has mutated to be better able to infect those with HIV too? I'm not a virologist either so the HIV question might be naïve but looking for differences in that environment compared to other parts of the world seems worthwhile.
I believe the theory is that since this variant has so many mutations, it evolved over quite some time within a single host with a lowered immune response. Makes sense that this would happen in an area with high HIV prevalence.
Chiming in as a 3rd level of uneducated layman, but isn't one of the defining features of HIV that it makes it easier for other infections? I'm not sure what adaptation would be required there.
Common wisdom is that immunocompromised individuals, which are unable to battle off the virus and suffer the infection for long periods of time, are fertile grounds for variants evolution.
"Rapid viral evolution has been described in immunosuppressed patients with persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection. Choi et al. described an immunosuppressed patient with antiphospholipid syndrome who was hospitalized in August 2020 and treated with anticoagulants, glucocorticoids, cyclophosphamide, intermittent rituximab, and eculizumab.2 During 152 days of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection in this patient, the investigators identified 31 substitutions and three deletions in genome sequences. Twelve spike mutations were found, including seven in a segment of the receptor-binding domain consisting of 24 amino acids, some at sites linked to immune evasion (478, 484, and 493).6,7 The patient eventually died of severe Covid-19–related pneumonia. "
Right now the biggest concern is that this variant is the most mutated from the original strain and it is unknown how effective, if at all, our current vaccines are against it.
As to is it worse (i.e. more contagious, more deadly, increased risk of hospitalised) than the current Delta variant I think it is too early to say with any confidence.
Apparently it has taken over from the Delta-variant in southern Africa. But I haven't heard anything about how sick you get, how deadly it is, and how effective the current vaccines are. This region is poorly vaccinated, so it could very well be that the vaccines still are effective.
There's a general tendency for viruses to become less deadly when they become easier to spread. But that's just a general tendency and we'll have to wait and see if it's true in this case because from time to time it's not.
It does have a large number of mutations. There is a theory being bounced around that the rapid decline in cases in Japan might be due to the virus there having mutated itself out of the ability to copy itself correctly so what is still spreading is falling apart. We can hope for something similar with this variant but it's just that, hope, for now.
We don't know. But the early data looks concerning enough to warrant attention and closer examination.
The early data is always not very reliable, there are some big effects that can skew the data and you don't have many data points yet at that point. There is also no lab work done yet, where you'd directly examine the properties of a variant.
This very well could be worse than delta, but it also might not be. It looks more concerning than any variant we've seen since Delta, but we simply don't have hard data that early.
it's very early in terms of the data that's out there, but so far it looks quite bad.
the ELI5 is that it's expanding really fast, and it is probably at least somewhat resistant to our immune system's first line of defenses that are formed from vaccination or a prior infection. the details on all of those points are very much in flux still, so be aware that the story could change as we learn more.
in more detail:
the biggest piece of worrying evidence is that it's growing as a proportion of cases in south africa at such an intensely fast rate that it's outcompeting the delta variant as though it isn't even there, which means it's far more transmissible than any other variant.
as far as i know, there isn't any information on whether it has higher lethality compared to delta, but my hunch is that it does.
the reason why i think it will end up having increased lethality is that it appears to have a complex of mutations that are associated with resistance to antibodies, likely including those generated by vaccination. that will make it take longer for the immune system to form an effective response to infection, allowing the virus to replicate rampantly and cause organ damage for longer.
keep in mind every other variant has also exhibited this property at least to a small amount, and in most cases, regardless of vaccination, our bodies are still able to clear the infection.
the issue is that this time around, the variant doesn't have just one or two tropisms associated with lower antibody binding efficiency, but perhaps a couple dozen. so, it'll likely be more effective at reinfecting people who have already had covid, too. and even though the variant may be "vaccine resistant", i'd bet that vaccinated people will still fare better than unvaccinated people. unfortunately, our antibody therapies probably won't be as helpful at saving people who are hospitalized.
but, our antiviral therapies (including those still in development) shouldn't be any less effective against this variant, which is a very faint silver lining.
in conclusion: buckle up, we're probably in for a rough ride.
> biggest piece of worrying evidence is that it's growing as a proportion of cases in south africa at such an intensely fast rate that it's outcompeting the delta variant as though it isn't even there, which means it's far more transmissible than any other variant.
OTOH - cases in SA were very low, so we would see this sort of growth of a variant very quickly just due to founder effects without anything nefarious going on.
Delta arrived when the background number of cases was much higher so it took longer to become a high proportion of cases.
That's objectively false, seeing as though the test infrastructure has been able to detect hundreds of thousands more cases during the country's waves. If your claim was accurate, South Africa's case rate would have plateaued at a level and just stayed there.
Sure, the testing infrastructure is not as good as in a developed country, but it has many orders of magnitude more capacity than the current case rate.
If testing is limited but effectively randomly sampling, then measured incidence will be proportionate to actual incidence.
If testing is targeted toward regions of higher interest and likelihood, then test positivity should skyrocket out of proportion to actual positives. (I'm not sure what the case is for South Africa.)
Using deaths as a lagging indicator of cases, South Africa reports about a 3% CFR (based on reported cases and deaths), as opposed to about 2% for the US. This would suggest a somewhat lower testing prevalence in ZA, by about a third, but not an especially bad record. This does assume that Covid deaths are being accurately assessed and reported. Total excess mortality is the usual check for that.
My read is that ZA's testing infrastructure is reasonably good, and that the B.1.1.539 variant's growth is extraordinary.
> the biggest piece of worrying evidence is that it's growing as a proportion of cases in south africa at such an intensely fast rate that it's outcompeting the delta variant as though it isn't even there, which means it's far more transmissible than any other variant.
Can anyone ELI5 how this is working?
If the Covid #s SA is reporting are accurate, the entire country is only at around ~2.5k cases per day.
Since Delta has an R0 between 6-7, for this to be outcompeting it so substantially, it would need to have an R0 of 8-9 (if not higher) -- at which point it would be almost as contagious as Measles. For it to be this contagious, wouldn't there already HAVE to be ~10k+ cases per day in SA?
The original Covid had an incubation period of 5.4 days. Delta dropped to 4.
If this has been around for weeks, with an incubation period of 4 days, shouldn't this have already infected close to ~100k people? And shouldn't there be 10s of thousands of infections per day?
To be fair, the growth rate South Africa IS reporting is 10x in 4 days. If that trend continues for even three weeks, then it would infect the entire country...
Does anyone know how reliable South Africa's #s are?
> Does anyone know how reliable South Africa's #s are?
This is what I was going to comment on as I was reading your post but glad you brought it up here at the end.
I would have a difficult time believing the COVID numbers in South Africa are being reported reliably (regardless of the reason).
SPECULATION:
I'd love to know more if this is incorrect but I think even in countries like the United States, or Denmark, or Germany, or wherever the numbers are likely to be undercounted based on people just getting sick and not doing anything about it. My intuition is that numbers in countries like South Korea, Singapore, and perhaps Israel are more likely to be closer to the "ground truth". Other countries in Asia I have less confidence in (Japan and China). We probably need to develop and deploy more rapid at-home testing.
I’d say sure it’s under control, I question the infection numbers and deaths. Then again maybe they’re posting the real numbers because they’re so good. But I’m not sure I buy that.
Sure. I think with China and COVID-19 so far my stance is guilty until proven innocent. Not really getting a lot of antibody testing done from people who don't travel or who have died. The CCP is inherently incentivized to fake numbers, underreport (this is a China-wide problem and you can see it manifest in the debt crises unfolding there), and downplay any problems so that the CCP looks strong.
And this has nothing to do with being pro or anti-China. I think it's just an obvious recognition of incentives and current state.
There's always going to be some undercounting, as in any country, but in terms of being able to test enough cases and be consistent over time South Africa's numbers are reliable.
During earlier waves the testing infrastructure has detected orders of magnitude more cases, and the current lull in cases is following what epidemiologists predicted and expected before a fourth wave in December/January.
>the issue is that this time around, the variant doesn't have just one or two tropisms associated with lower antibody binding efficiency, but perhaps a couple dozen.
Can you share a source for this? I'd like to hear more.
summary of the phenomenon in layman's terms: when binding at 100% efficiency, antibodies bind to portions of the spike protein like a key fits into a lock, so it's easy to "unlock" the lock, thereby neutralizing the viral particle. when there are mutations which affect the shapes of the different portions of the spike protein, it's like the pins in the lock shifting so that the key you used before might not work without quite a bit of jiggling, assuming you can get it to unlock the lock at all. the more mutations that increase the amount of jiggling it takes, the more the pins in the lock become intractable with the key you have.
this set of analogies is imperfect in a few ways, but hopefully it helps you to understand the gist of the problem.
> Belgium's first case of new COVID variant is a young, unvaccinated woman who returned from Egypt on Nov. 11 and developed symptoms 11 days later - RTBF
How is Belgium/Europe letting unvaccinated people in? I had to be double vaxxed and negative RT PCR within 6 hours of travel to go to Canada or back to India. Being double vaxxed is an entry requirement for almost all the countries right now.
At the moment you have to fill a PLF (passenger locator form) at arrival so you can be tracked and people you met contacted in case you develop covid symptoms.
Check which COVID certificate you have at www.covidsafe.be. In principle, you have applied for this before you left. There are three types of certificates:
A vaccination certificate proves that you have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. You are fully vaccinated 2 weeks after your last vaccination dose and if the vaccine is EMA-certified or Covishield. From 1 September, vaccination certificates from non-EU countries will also be accepted in Belgium under certain conditions, pending their equivalence agreement with the EU.
A recovery certificate shows that you have recovered from COVID-19. You have a positive PCR test result no older than 180 days and you no longer need to isolate.
A test certificate is proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test result that is less than 72 hours old or RAT test result that is taken the day before or the day of arrival.
So she was allowed to leave, catch covid abroad and get back.
I know.
I was also surprised (ENRAGED) to realize that our sanitary pass allow(ed) vaccinated people to attend mass events or restaurants or places where that pass is mandatory even if they have covid symptoms or are under quarantine.
As of November 8, 2021, all fully vaccinated persons are able to travel from Belgium to the U.S. The details on the proof of vaccination and the pre-departure COVID-test are explained on the website of the U.S. Department of State.
U.S. residents are eligible to travel from the U.S. to Belgium, if they are fully vaccinated and have a valid vaccination certificate. We recommend you take all available proof of vaccination with you when traveling, both the CDC card and – when available – State-issued certificates. Please note that airlines decide under which conditions they carry passengers. We recommend you enquire about those conditions before booking your flight.
Upon arrival in Belgium, travelers undergo a mandatory test on day 1 and on day 7. Depending on your vaccination status, you should stay in quarantine for 2 or 10 days. Unvaccinated travelers can only travel in very exceptional circumstances, listed here.
Belgium is highly dnse and there are a lot of people moving in and out of the country. Short term, I think we are fucked and I am beginning to wonder if/how I should plan to isolate for the next three months.
Only recently did the headlines went from "there a no scientific evidences for a third dose" to "WE NEED EVERYONE TO GET A THIRD DOSE ASAP".
Really, folks have to start confronting reality here: the vast majority of people are simply not at risk, and treating this like an ongoing emergency is having some serious side effects that exceed the underlying disease.
You do you, I have friends working in the ICU who see young people die daily. Having my groceries delivered instead of having to stroll through the shop really doesn't affect me.
> Vaccines reduce the risk of long COVID by lowering the chances of contracting COVID-19 in the first place. But for those who do experience a breakthrough infection, studies suggest that vaccination might only halve the risk of long COVID - or have no effect on it at all ... Long COVID can arise even after a mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infection
> For some individuals, long-COVID symptoms are mild; for others, they are life-changing. Nearly one-third of the people with long COVID at [Physiotherapist David] Putrino [of Mount Sinai Hospital’s Abilities Research Center in New York City]’s clinic have severe cognitive difficulties that can affect their ability to concentrate, speak and remember, and which were not present before their illness. About 60% of Putrino’s patients have had to change jobs or stop working as a result of their illness. “If you’re young and healthy, death from COVID may be highly unlikely,” Putrino says. “But severe debilitation is not.”
> Several studies are presented in this divulgative article. As was common for the topic of the not well defined long covid, numbers may vary strongly.
> --
> People divide in those who want to avoid death, and those who want to avoid damage. This article is very important in showing that those who intend to defend and preserve a maximized quality of life should take strong precautions to avoid infection, regardless of the vaccination status with the current products.
If I want to get on with my life there's a strong incentive to be extra prudent until we figure out something to deal with with or prevent long term non lethal but debilitating damages.
> I was also surprised [...] to realize that our sanitary pass allow(ed) vaccinated people to attend mass events or restaurants or places where that pass is mandatory even if they have covid symptoms or are under quarantine.
Unfortunately the bureaucratic apparatus has chosen to overplay the vaccines hand and build up a convenient scapegoat for when the vaccines prove to be less effective than originally claimed. The correct and ethical course of action is for everyone to undergo the same level of social protection measures.
I had to travel for work around europe. Some countries (norway for example) are very strict, I had border police/military (not sure what they were, but armed to the teeth) checking everything, and others, just seem like they dont care (I had a trip last week where to Denmark,and then back and I didn't show anyone at all my normal passport or covid passport. Just showed ticket and all was good).
So yeah, this shit will never end until countries that aren't dependent on tourism actually start to care about it.
In general you can travel in and out of Europe (as a resident) by showing a documentation of vaccination or a clean test. I would guess she did a test in Egypt on return that was negative.
The first case in HK only showed up on fourth PCR test on a fully vaccinated individual in mandatory quarantine.
This will only be solved or contained once we vax the developing world, so that we curb and slow down the emergence of variants.
Problem is that nobody in the developed world wants to be found with their briefs down and no vaccine availibility so the West is stockpiling jabs for people who essentially don't want it.
The west has been stuck around 67-70% for months now, with no tangible progress.
Those jabs, are the "use it or lose it" kind, if a vaccine resistant variant emerges in the 3rd world, all those stockpiles won't do any good, at that point for nobody.
>94% vaccinated in Ireland, and we're still hoarding boosters, and demonising the unvaccinated.
Meanwhile, our schools remain fully packed, with no additional resources for air quality, and the government have even told schools not to inform parents of COVID cases in classrooms.
PS Bill Gates is still responsible for an almost incalculable amount of harm, because of his actions against free and libre software and small businesses.
> PS Bill Gates is still responsible for an almost incalculable amount of harm, because of his actions against free and libre software and small businesses.
Free and libre software was always doomed because people who are worth their weight in gold due to their programming abilities want a nice mansion in Naples, FL with a nice dock and a 40 footer boat , not just a tap on their shoulders for a job well done.
One of the best returns on investment the U.S. government could make would probably be to pour money into ramping up vaccine production to give to poor countries. I believe the cost would be tiny relative to the economic risk of allowing more mutations and continued spread of Covid.
The numbers just don't add up for me. There are almost 8bn people in the world. Sceptical countries get 50% of their population vaccinated. Compliant countries say 80%. Even if it's 80%, that still means after everyone you can has been vaccinated you still have 1.6bn-4bn people unvaccinated.
You also can't vaccinate everyone at once. Vaccinating the world inevitably takes years, not months.
That leaves a lot of room for mutations. I don't see logistically how you get over that, you just can't. It sounds good but I don't see the practical solutions.
(And then we haven't even talked about cross infection with animals, deers are now 80% infected or something with covid? What happens when they cross over back with some new variant?)
On a viruses mutation potential? 1bn and 4bn is not orders of magnitude different. I don't think 1bn unvaccinated people is a guarantee of no more mutations. Especially when the vaccinated are still spreading, and selecting for more infectious mutations also.
Nothing is a guarantee of no mutations, that is why we think of the world probabilistically.
But there is a multiplicative effect - the sparser unvaxxed people become, the less general spread there will be.
The vaxxed are still spreading and it is true they cause selection, but this has been well studied and widespread vaccination absolutely would help reduce the rate of mutation.
> [...] this has been well studied and widespread vaccination absolutely would help reduce the rate of mutation.
I don't understand how this could be. Studies have shown that peak viral load is the same for vaccinated/unvaccinated, that means roughly the same number of replicative cycles in vaccinated as in unvaccinated. Each replication is a chance for the virus to aquire mutations, so same number of replicative cycles in vaccinated/unvaccinated means same rate of mutation in vaccinated/unvaccinated.
The science is not at all set on whether peak viral load is the same or not. Most of it seems to suggest that it is not the same initially, but might revert to it after 6-9 months after being vaxxed.
Spread is also less common among the vaxxed as I said, so even if it turns out to be no difference in load, there is still less opportunity for selection.
> even if it turns out to be no difference in load, there is still less opportunity for selection.
How so? Load means number of virus particles. Number of virus particles increases with the number of replication cycles. The probability of mutation increases with the number of replications. So, same number of replication cycles, (roughly) same chance of mutation.
Due to difference in rate of infection, both by spread and risk of contraction. Your UC Davis article does not show otherwise (it is conditioning on aspects of the infection among those already infected and does not measure the risk of being infected - only percent of days you test PCR positive), and there is extensive evidence showing less risk of both among the vaccinated.
The science around viral dynamics re: viral loads is much more uncertain than this - so I am not saying it is definite that the viral loads are less, only that there is both a mechanism and some evidence to suggest it is either less or quicker to go down (but the evidence here is mixed and it likely wears off).
But nonetheless, the science on transmissibility - even with breakthrough, is more certain.
You seem to be spreading misinformation all over this thread.
Here[0]'s a study from Nov 19th, saying that:
No significant differences were detected in duration of RT-PCR positivity among fully vaccinated participants (median: 13 days) versus those not fully vaccinated (median: 13 days; p=0.50), or in duration of culture positivity (medians: 5 days and 5 days; p=0.29).
Quote from the study you linked: "[...] we found that BTIs[breakthrough infections] in recently fully vaccinated individuals have lower viral loads than infections in unvaccinated individuals. However, this effect starts to decline 2 months after vaccination and ultimately vanishes 6 months or longer after vaccination."
Is there any actual evidence of decreased spread because of the vaccine? I was under the impression that it simply changed the intensity of the disease.
Yes, the evidence is there - it is less likely to transmit and less likely to be caught. Most of this evidence comes from testing of contacts because unfortunately there are pretty large confounding effects around likelihood to get tested based on severity of illness.
Also, the vaccine has been shown to reduce viral load which has an impact on rate of mutation even if you are infected.
> the vaccine has been shown to reduce viral load which has an impact on rate of mutation even if you are infected.
This doesn't seem to be the case⁰:
A new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive for the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.
When they analyzed the data, the researchers found wide variations in viral load within both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, but not between them. There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.
Up to now, Covid hasn't been lethal enough or common enough for 100% of people to want to be vaccinated.
It takes multiple people among one's friends and family dropping like flies to convince people in vaccine-hesitant places with ample supply (e.g. Bulgaria) to chose to get vaccinated.
Also it wouldn't hurt if vaccines were actually effective at preventing infection (rather than allowing infection but preventing severe disease)... and if they lasted more than half a year.
The vaccines last more than half a year. Certain nice-to-have bonus effects beyond "you probably won't die or suffer long-term effects and you're less likely to spread it" fade a bit after six months. The booster is for the nice-to-haves, like reducing symptomatic but minor-moderate infections.
Every single benefit of the vaccines seem to fade over six months or so - not justt symptomatic infections, but also protection against serious effects, hospitalization, and death. That's why there's been so much push for boosters even in countries like the UK which have given up on stopping the spread of the virus. (Yes, I know the WHO is opposed to booster shots, but frankly they seem to be a bunch of idiots who care more about what's politically useful than reality these days.)
Vaccinating the developed world is a start - but it isn't a panacea.
If the global Covid #s are accurate - the majority of the Covid infections happening are in the developed world.
It'd be great if we could stop the spread in the developing world - but we need to stop it in the developed world, too - or else mutations are still bound to happen.
If we want to be nihilists, it’s spreading throughout deer populations and I doubt anybody is even entertaining the idea of vaccinating wild populations.
# observed infections = # of infections * probability of testing * probability of authority trustworthiness. Alas, in the developing world test penetration is low and authorities are not particularly trustworthy.
"This will only be solved or contained once we vax the developing world"
Careful here. There is no guarantee that once 95% of the world is vaccinated that this will be solved. Respiratory viral infections are notorious for mutating and spreading regardless of vaccines or treatment.
IMO its important not to simplify the situation and say if group A just did this than everything would be okay. Its quite possible this virus is simply here to stay and a multi array of treatments will hopefully continue to improve outcomes.
The vaccine is leaky. Therefore, the vaccine will do more bad than good, long term. This variant could be the one to popularize Original Antigenic Sin. Hopefully not.... But part of me wants for the Fu*** to learn their lesson and stop punishing dissent, pretending they are god (they being politicians and scientists)
The trouble is the authorities won't learn anything - many could care less about science or history, they just care about power and influence.
I do agree that more dissent and conflicting expert opinions were needed in this crisis. Especially dangerous is the idea that "if only everyone did X", then all will be well. This is rarely true.
I think the government's role should be to transmit the best possible information available at the moment, give some strong recommendations and incentives (and change them when new information comes to light), but never use force and coercion. It simply doesn't work in the long run.
Your account has been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what they're battling for. We have to, because it destroys this place for its intended purpose.
I'm not going to ban you right now, because I did notice a few previous comments that weren't doing this—though I had to look pretty hard for them. If you keep this up, though, we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
> There is no guarantee that once 95% of the world is vaccinated that this will be solved. Respiratory viral infections are notorious for mutating and spreading regardless of vaccines or treatment.
Especially true since the virus lives in animals, so it will never be eradicated.
There are remarkably few mamallian species with > 1m population. Virtually all are grazing animals, sea mammals, or rodents.
I'm not sure what species SARS-COV-2 is compatible with, though I've mostly heard of animals > 5kg mass (e.g., domesticated cats, dogs, deer, wildcats), with the very notable exception of bats.
The virus has been detected in 20--40% of sampled deer in the US in multiple states, which is a particularly bad sign.
If it's gained foothold in rodent populations ... well, it could be around for a while.
From April of 2021:
Results obtained from experimental studies indicate that animal species such as cats, ferrets, raccoon dogs, cynomolgus macaques, rhesus macaques, white-tailed deer, rabbits, Egyptian fruit bats, and Syrian hamsters are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and that cat-to-cat and ferret-to-ferret transmission can take place via contact and air. However, natural infections of SARS-CoV-2 have been reported only in pet dogs and cats, tigers, lions, snow leopards, pumas, and gorillas at zoos, and farmed mink and ferrets. Even though human-to-animal spillover has been reported at several instances, SARS-CoV-2 transmission from animals-to-humans has only been reported from mink-to-humans in mink farms.
That's not to say that broader transmission isn't possible (the abstract doesn't mention deer, and I'm aware they're found to be infected). The science is still being established.
Of course it would have been great for people who are already dealing with malaria and HIV to inject with a vaccine put together in a factory somewhere in Kinshasa where the measuring instruments for quantities are just two : left and right eyeball.
Let's see how we do on the next pandemic if we screw the IP out of all of the producers who stepped up to produce a vaccine.
If the scenario is that they'd still have their mRNA IP if they had decided not to make a vaccine, that is not the incentive structure we want to setup.
>This will only be solved or contained once we vax the developing world, so that we curb and slow down the emergence of variants.
Cases have been surging for at least a month in 70-95% vaccinated countries. It is absolutely clear at this point that these vaccines will not eradicate covid. This madness over vaccines needs to end.
The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well. In many parts of the US life is effectively back to normal - and if ICUs are still out of capacity after two years of this pandemic then clearly there's a different, more readily solvable problem. Covid is not going anywhere but the hysteria is not justified - people are dramatically overestimating the risks.
At least you could mention that the cases are mainly surging in the unvaccinated.
Also I don’t think anybody has said vaccines are going to eradicate covid, it is just a matter of saving peoples lives from completely preventable suffering and death.
The problem is the healthcare system. If the healthcare system collapses because doctors and nurses die, get long covid and can't work, or just burn out and leave, then the chances of dying from literally everything else go up significantly. Easily treatable cancers don't get treated because there's no capacity. People who get hurt in car crashes don't get seen and die of infections or sepsis or whatever because there aren't any ER beds. Everyone delays elective care because there's no capacity.
In short, it's never been about saving the population in general, although that is a desirable side effect. The entire lock down and vaccination push has been about preserving the healthcare system. Doctors and nurses take many years to make, it's not exactly a quick fix.
> If the healthcare system collapses because doctors and nurses die, get long covid and can't work, or just burn out and leave,
...or get fired because of vaccine mandates. Let's not forget about that, because it really does put the lie to the underlying concern here. Are folks worried about "health system collapse", or are they just indiscriminately terrified?
If you're truly worried about the former, then it probably doesn't make a ton of sense to place a vaccination mandate on a group of people who largely got infected and recovered early in the pandemic -- at least offer recognition of natural immunity for health care workers!
A significant portion of the people that end up in an ICU don't make it out. It's not surprising that expanding ICU capacity (beyond an emergency basis) isn't a huge focus.
The 1918 pandemic also killed 17-50 million people at a time that there were many fewer people.
While it is probably an under-count, it appears that Covid has killed at least 5 million.
Public health measures and vaccines have prevented a rather spectacular number of deaths as we have worked to find a way to coexist with this virus.
It seems likely that with a sufficient number of infections and waves, yes, humans would eventually force Covid to evolve in the direction of other more-benign viruses. The question at hand is really: how many waves and variants are we willing to tolerate to get there (and how much human suffering is acceptable?)?
We have tools and tactics that can help to speed the end of the pandemic and decrease the number of people who die. We should use them well.
> and if ICUs are still out of capacity after two years of this pandemic then clearly there's a different, more readily solvable problem
You can't just spawn medical personnel, especially in the conditions that are prevalent due to Covid cases ( lots of work, burnout, etc.). It literally takes years to educate medical personnel, you can't just YOLO it.
> It is absolutely clear at this point that these vaccines will not eradicate covid. [...]
> The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well.
You're begging the question here. As best as we can tell, variants tend to come up when individual people mount a marginally effective immune response to the virus -- just enough to keep it in check but not enough to eradicate it. Effectively, they become a walking "gain of function" experiment.
Vaccines help at the outset by strengthening the immune response. They also help on a statistical basis by simply reducing the background rate of covid in a society. Given the development of new mutations with vaccine availability, we'd be likely to see as many or more mutations without widespread vaccination. If "covid will pass" without vaccination, then it will pass faster with, and the reverse implication is not necessarily true.
Remember, while the media often calls variants of concerns "vaccine escapes," the real effect is immune escape. If a new variant is more likely than average to cause a breakthrough case in a vaccinated person, it's also more likely than average to cause a reinfection in a recovered person.
If you want to be optimistic, then you can still hold out hope that new, more infectious variants may be less severe. The "human gain of function experiment" process for creating variants would select for both infectivity and non-severity. However, I do not have any data on the relative severity of B.1.1.529, and summer/early fall reporting on Delta suggested that it tended to cause somewhat more severe illness than Covid Classic.
In the 1889–1890 pandemic (possibly the origin of human coronavirus OC43), the virus spread around the world within the first six months. There were subsequent waves for one or two years.
So far the variant is very rare (unless there are newer numbers than I found yesterday). There’s a lag of months, I think, between these numbers and where it becomes a phenomenon you’re likely to interact with at the local store.
Further, the world should be reacting to Covid at the global level. So far it’s like we’re not even addressing the beast on the turf it’s attacking us. And the price to do so, say 70 billion USD at a cost of 10$/dose (which it probably isn’t), is nothing compared to the reacting we’re seeing here today and will continue to see.
Those "rapdily displaced" numbers are based on a small number of samples and are not to be trusted. The fact that they're being repeated now is essentially fear-mongering by the news media.
Do you go to extreme efforts, enduring public lambasting simply in order to get returns on 0.002% of your portfolio? When you've already got so much money you can't give it away fast enough?
I think it takes some exceptionally motivated reasoning to believe that Mr. Gates is doing this because he only wants money.
If that were true, why has New Zealand failed to stop COVID? They're a couple of islands surrounded by over a thousand miles of ocean between them and neighboring countries, they did lockdowns and achieved over 90% vaccine compliance, and after all this time they recently admitted that they no longer believed they could stop the virus.
I am aware of his billions and the many ways he makes them. I have a machine sitting at my desk that never got close to an inch close to Windows, runs exclusively Linux, but a part of the money I paid for the hardware, ends up at Microsoft.
But if I donate 10 billion to promote child education does not make me an expert on it.
I am however, aware of some his efforts to restrict global access to vaccines something that will definitely be shown to be a mistake as new Covid mutations
emerge outside of the rich "triple vaccinated world"
Who's to say that the person who harbored this mutation wasn't vaccinated? The only thing we know is that they suspect it developed in an individual with HIV.
Bill, like many CS people, doesn't understand biology well enough to couch his statements. We could do what he said, and not have that outcome. In particular, I really doubt that some sort of magical herd immunity shows up when; that's been a wild guess of some scientists for a while, but it's not really a firm prediction.
BTW, with some of the newly designed vaccines, if the virus mutates, the vaccine can be rapidly changed to respond to that (because it's sequence based). That changes things a lot.
> the West is stockpiling jabs for people who essentially don't want it.
...and also don't need it (boosters for healthy, young people). The WHO has repeatedly begged the western world to stop prioritizing boosters for healthy people, but the west continues to do this, instead of getting shots to the rest of the world:
This all seems to be a tragic attempt by politicians to appease their terrified base, coupled with incompetent scientists who continue to pursue eradication as a goal.
I don't think there is a terrified base. People either vaccinated or scream very loud they don't want to.
I do think the politicians are getting terrified. They have been incompetent since at least the 90's. Until now, first world circumstances were good enough that nobody cared much.
Corona changed that. There is a need for coordination on a massive scale, and they simply aren't up to it. You can't blather your way out of Covid. People are looking at them, and it's almost impossible to notice they aren't good for just about anything.
There are definitely vaccinated people who continue to believe they're "at risk", and are demanding boosters, loudly. I know some personally, and I see this all over social media.
Agreed about the politicians being terrified, but I tend to be more sanguine: this is a modern re-telling of Canute and the tide, but the leaders aren't intelligent.
The people are demanding that the tides be pushed back, and the leaders are doing the bidding of the people (and CNN is on 24/7, with Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon telling people that the tides are coming to get them and their children.)
The original sin here was giving them the power to take away our fundamental rights in the first place. The rest was sadly predictable.
Elderly people, many of whom received their last dose >9 months ago, are definitely at some risk again despite being technically vaxxed. IMO boosters were not pushed hard enough for this population in the early fall. Now Thanksgiving is past and we only have a few weeks to administer boosters that would be effective in time for Christmas gatherings.
> Elderly people, many of whom received their last dose >9 months ago, are definitely at some risk again despite being technically vaxxed.
No, not all elderly people -- I was careful to put "healthy" in there, and I meant it. Honestly, I probably should have added "not obese" as well. There is not enough risk stratification happening in discussions of this illness.
But sure, at a high level, if we want to put third doses in the arms of people over 65, I think that's more evidence-based than the current recommendations.
Vaccines are a band-aid fix for a much deeper systemic issue. The real fix is to sever the codependency of peoples separated by thousands of miles. Why should a disease outbreak in some far away Mongolian village affect me here in my village? Why are we moving to and through everyone else's villages so frequently? Coupled with a too-efficient and codependent (fragile) logistics system, look at how damaging the outbreak of a relatively minor [1] disease has proven to be. What happens when an actual black swan strikes at our codependent little global village? What then?
"The wise person reduces the importance of governments
And simplifies the modes of living,
So that people use fewer tools and wares
And treasure simplicity in their lives,
So that, though there are vehicles,
People do not take them.
And, though there are weapons,
People do not carry them.
And, though there are records,
Tying knots will serve the record-keeping purpose.
Thus, the highest political achievement is one
In which people savor their food,
Like the beauty of their clothes,
Appreciate their safe and peaceful homes,
Enjoy their social customs;
And in which roosters and dogs
Can be heard between countries;
But people, all their lives,
Have no need to go across the borders."
- Translated by Liu Qixuan, Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi
[1] relative to bubonic plague, smallpox, polio, etc.
This has a full court Press rush with more wind than the "Facebook whistle blower". That alone ought to be enough to engineer some doubt at this point.
They’re an eternal optimist, and were an optimist in the face of Europe’s resurgence. Europe now on verge of new lockdowns even before Nu variant.
I don’t dismiss what they have to say entirely, they have expertise and they don’t publish wrong facts. But they are sort of like the Economist magazine. You know what they’ll say before you read it.
This variant hasn't reached Europe, so it's not related to the increase in cases there. I think it was always known it might be seasonal, so it's not like this was unexpected. Last I checked, most of the new cases are still in unvaccinated people by a wide margin.
Growing up on cartoons has conditioned me to trust talking animals, but I think she's probably right about the risks. The variants have shown no meaningful ability to change what the vaccines target.
She argued India hit herd immunity right before their delta wave. And about a month ago said the pandemic was finally done. (She says this every few months)
It seems likely that people are overinterpreting the graph that's been going around. We just don't know at this point. There's not much that the average person can do anyway, besides getting vaxxed, wearing a mask, and maybe not traveling internationally.
> Thoughts: Yes, this variant has a high # of spike mutations, & a few known to cause changes. But, we've seen previous variants that looked worrying & never took off. We should watch & wait for more data to estimate how concerning this is.
> Important thing to keep in mind: - SA has recently had relatively low cases - this may leave a void which a new variant can spread into more easily - it likely hasn't had to compete with Delta. In other places, where Delta rages, it may not be as fit.
> Important thing to keep in mind: - We don't know what other factors may be helping spread, for example, an event or recent behaviour change - SA has a low vax rate - 28% 1dose, 24% 2dose. Immune evasion may not be needed to spread. Fitness could differ in higher-vax countries.
...
I'm very skeptical because Omicron has P681H at the FCS which was already displaced by P681R everywhere. This looks like backwards evolution.
It may have evolved in an HIV/AIDS patient in South Africa and adapted itself to in-host immune evasion, and established itself in South Africa into a relative vacuum of spread via founder effects, luck and whatever forces are driving the roughly 6-month cycles of waves that we tend to see. That doesn't mean that it is going to be able to outcompete Delta.
Of course it may acquire P681R through mutation or recombination or Delta could pick up some of its novel mutations, or maybe P681H makes a comeback because it gets worse in combination with mutations elsewhere in the genome. Everything is still on the table from this being a flash-in-the-pan that disappears once its faces significant competition from delta, up to it becoming worse. And I may be somewhat downplaying the risks due to everyone else overly assuming the risks when we have no useful information.
1. Most of the developing world will never be vaccinated
2. Even if it will they will not get the "updated dose" in time
3. Rollout of boosters is not proportional. I still cant get my 3rd dose in Europe even when I asked for it (i am just 1 week short for 6 months)
4. Not all vaccines are treated the same.
It feels like we will live in this dystopian neo-fascist world where you have no right for freedom of movement and right to privacy anymore for a while.
If I knew the Western world would screw this much I would have relocated to China where I can at least get some benefit from all these ridiculous rules.
Have you tried going to Romania? You can often just tell that you don't have a shot yet and they will give you one, there's so much vaccine hesistancy there (at least that's my plan for my parents who only got 3 shots so far in Hungary).
From a somewhat unemotional perspective I'd argue this disease comes with quite a silver lining - _especially_ for developing countries. Old and sick people will die - which releases social and financial burden. While adults and healthy folks up to an age of 50 will be mostly fine. Not being vaccinated just speeds up the process until reaching an endemic state. Also people in developing countries have less issues with obesity which is one of the major comorbidities in the first world. We (westerns) on the other hand seem to go nuts over small inconveniences ripping the social fibres apart.
The west focuses too much on those X people have died of covid imo. A death is a singular not a plural experience. X people dying means X people individually experiencing dying - we all die eventually - and we all have to cope with deaths of close ones. That's a fact of life. For one person dying - the process is not better or worse if more or less people are virtually dying chronologically close by or of a similar cause. X people dying is a political and economic quantity - and many people dying especially old and weak ones is not necessarily economically, politically and two weeks later socially a bad thing.
So, Africa and Asia will do pretty well compared to us.
176 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadThere are some protein/spike characteristics of this variant which alarm scientists who think it might evade vax-generated antibodies better--i.e. alpha/delta-targeting vax antibodies may provide less resistance to this one.
So on the one hand it //could be// worse than Delta but I am personally waiting for more data to flow out (esp. beyond SA).
Numbers this early can be very misleading, but anecdotes have cropped up about infections occurring from one hotel room to another, possibly through the HVAC system, which is not a durability trick that previous variants were believed to have.
My understanding is that this virus has a mutated spike protein, i.e. a different "outside shell". This spike protein is what gives the virus its ability to attach to human cells, and also what most vaccines "expose" to your immune system to teach it how to recognize COVID-19.
The difference in this variant's spike protein might have effect, among other things, on the ability of the immune system of a person that has been vaccinated to recognize the virus, so there's potential for a much decreased response/efficacy of the vaccines. However this is pure speculation at this point.
Update: earlier this year it aws speculated that the beta mutation might have increased infectivity and/or the ability to better elude the immune response; that variant eventually died out, and delta is now the prevalent one. It might be a similar case, but it's hard to tell yet, and it's of course better to err on the side of caution.
It would be a small chance for this to be completely random.
South Africa has ~3M reported cases (~1.2% of global) and ~60M people (~.7% of global).
"Rapid viral evolution has been described in immunosuppressed patients with persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection. Choi et al. described an immunosuppressed patient with antiphospholipid syndrome who was hospitalized in August 2020 and treated with anticoagulants, glucocorticoids, cyclophosphamide, intermittent rituximab, and eculizumab.2 During 152 days of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection in this patient, the investigators identified 31 substitutions and three deletions in genome sequences. Twelve spike mutations were found, including seven in a segment of the receptor-binding domain consisting of 24 amino acids, some at sites linked to immune evasion (478, 484, and 493).6,7 The patient eventually died of severe Covid-19–related pneumonia. "
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2104756
As to is it worse (i.e. more contagious, more deadly, increased risk of hospitalised) than the current Delta variant I think it is too early to say with any confidence.
It does have a large number of mutations. There is a theory being bounced around that the rapid decline in cases in Japan might be due to the virus there having mutated itself out of the ability to copy itself correctly so what is still spreading is falling apart. We can hope for something similar with this variant but it's just that, hope, for now.
The early data is always not very reliable, there are some big effects that can skew the data and you don't have many data points yet at that point. There is also no lab work done yet, where you'd directly examine the properties of a variant.
This very well could be worse than delta, but it also might not be. It looks more concerning than any variant we've seen since Delta, but we simply don't have hard data that early.
the ELI5 is that it's expanding really fast, and it is probably at least somewhat resistant to our immune system's first line of defenses that are formed from vaccination or a prior infection. the details on all of those points are very much in flux still, so be aware that the story could change as we learn more.
in more detail:
the biggest piece of worrying evidence is that it's growing as a proportion of cases in south africa at such an intensely fast rate that it's outcompeting the delta variant as though it isn't even there, which means it's far more transmissible than any other variant.
as far as i know, there isn't any information on whether it has higher lethality compared to delta, but my hunch is that it does.
the reason why i think it will end up having increased lethality is that it appears to have a complex of mutations that are associated with resistance to antibodies, likely including those generated by vaccination. that will make it take longer for the immune system to form an effective response to infection, allowing the virus to replicate rampantly and cause organ damage for longer.
keep in mind every other variant has also exhibited this property at least to a small amount, and in most cases, regardless of vaccination, our bodies are still able to clear the infection.
the issue is that this time around, the variant doesn't have just one or two tropisms associated with lower antibody binding efficiency, but perhaps a couple dozen. so, it'll likely be more effective at reinfecting people who have already had covid, too. and even though the variant may be "vaccine resistant", i'd bet that vaccinated people will still fare better than unvaccinated people. unfortunately, our antibody therapies probably won't be as helpful at saving people who are hospitalized.
but, our antiviral therapies (including those still in development) shouldn't be any less effective against this variant, which is a very faint silver lining.
in conclusion: buckle up, we're probably in for a rough ride.
OTOH - cases in SA were very low, so we would see this sort of growth of a variant very quickly just due to founder effects without anything nefarious going on.
Delta arrived when the background number of cases was much higher so it took longer to become a high proportion of cases.
Sure, the testing infrastructure is not as good as in a developed country, but it has many orders of magnitude more capacity than the current case rate.
If testing is targeted toward regions of higher interest and likelihood, then test positivity should skyrocket out of proportion to actual positives. (I'm not sure what the case is for South Africa.)
Using deaths as a lagging indicator of cases, South Africa reports about a 3% CFR (based on reported cases and deaths), as opposed to about 2% for the US. This would suggest a somewhat lower testing prevalence in ZA, by about a third, but not an especially bad record. This does assume that Covid deaths are being accurately assessed and reported. Total excess mortality is the usual check for that.
My read is that ZA's testing infrastructure is reasonably good, and that the B.1.1.539 variant's growth is extraordinary.
I'm relying on Worldometers data:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-afri...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Can anyone ELI5 how this is working?
If the Covid #s SA is reporting are accurate, the entire country is only at around ~2.5k cases per day.
Since Delta has an R0 between 6-7, for this to be outcompeting it so substantially, it would need to have an R0 of 8-9 (if not higher) -- at which point it would be almost as contagious as Measles. For it to be this contagious, wouldn't there already HAVE to be ~10k+ cases per day in SA?
The original Covid had an incubation period of 5.4 days. Delta dropped to 4.
If this has been around for weeks, with an incubation period of 4 days, shouldn't this have already infected close to ~100k people? And shouldn't there be 10s of thousands of infections per day?
To be fair, the growth rate South Africa IS reporting is 10x in 4 days. If that trend continues for even three weeks, then it would infect the entire country...
Does anyone know how reliable South Africa's #s are?
This is what I was going to comment on as I was reading your post but glad you brought it up here at the end.
I would have a difficult time believing the COVID numbers in South Africa are being reported reliably (regardless of the reason).
SPECULATION:
I'd love to know more if this is incorrect but I think even in countries like the United States, or Denmark, or Germany, or wherever the numbers are likely to be undercounted based on people just getting sick and not doing anything about it. My intuition is that numbers in countries like South Korea, Singapore, and perhaps Israel are more likely to be closer to the "ground truth". Other countries in Asia I have less confidence in (Japan and China). We probably need to develop and deploy more rapid at-home testing.
Given that tons of people were wearing masks even prior to the pandemic, I don't find it that ridiculous.
And this has nothing to do with being pro or anti-China. I think it's just an obvious recognition of incentives and current state.
During earlier waves the testing infrastructure has detected orders of magnitude more cases, and the current lull in cases is following what epidemiologists predicted and expected before a fourth wave in December/January.
Can you share a source for this? I'd like to hear more.
mutation profile of this particular variant: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
summary of the phenomenon in layman's terms: when binding at 100% efficiency, antibodies bind to portions of the spike protein like a key fits into a lock, so it's easy to "unlock" the lock, thereby neutralizing the viral particle. when there are mutations which affect the shapes of the different portions of the spike protein, it's like the pins in the lock shifting so that the key you used before might not work without quite a bit of jiggling, assuming you can get it to unlock the lock at all. the more mutations that increase the amount of jiggling it takes, the more the pins in the lock become intractable with the key you have.
this set of analogies is imperfect in a few ways, but hopefully it helps you to understand the gist of the problem.
How is Belgium/Europe letting unvaccinated people in? I had to be double vaxxed and negative RT PCR within 6 hours of travel to go to Canada or back to India. Being double vaxxed is an entry requirement for almost all the countries right now.
Considering Belgium specifically https://www.info-coronavirus.be/en/travels/:
So she was allowed to leave, catch covid abroad and get back.I know.
I was also surprised (ENRAGED) to realize that our sanitary pass allow(ed) vaccinated people to attend mass events or restaurants or places where that pass is mandatory even if they have covid symptoms or are under quarantine.
Apparently US citizens undergo a mandatory tests at arrival and must be fully vaccinated. From: https://unitedstates.diplomatie.belgium.be/en/coronavirus-co...
Belgium is highly dnse and there are a lot of people moving in and out of the country. Short term, I think we are fucked and I am beginning to wonder if/how I should plan to isolate for the next three months.Only recently did the headlines went from "there a no scientific evidences for a third dose" to "WE NEED EVERYONE TO GET A THIRD DOSE ASAP".
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2
> Vaccines reduce the risk of long COVID by lowering the chances of contracting COVID-19 in the first place. But for those who do experience a breakthrough infection, studies suggest that vaccination might only halve the risk of long COVID - or have no effect on it at all ... Long COVID can arise even after a mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infection
> For some individuals, long-COVID symptoms are mild; for others, they are life-changing. Nearly one-third of the people with long COVID at [Physiotherapist David] Putrino [of Mount Sinai Hospital’s Abilities Research Center in New York City]’s clinic have severe cognitive difficulties that can affect their ability to concentrate, speak and remember, and which were not present before their illness. About 60% of Putrino’s patients have had to change jobs or stop working as a result of their illness. “If you’re young and healthy, death from COVID may be highly unlikely,” Putrino says. “But severe debilitation is not.”
> Several studies are presented in this divulgative article. As was common for the topic of the not well defined long covid, numbers may vary strongly.
> --
> People divide in those who want to avoid death, and those who want to avoid damage. This article is very important in showing that those who intend to defend and preserve a maximized quality of life should take strong precautions to avoid infection, regardless of the vaccination status with the current products.
If I want to get on with my life there's a strong incentive to be extra prudent until we figure out something to deal with with or prevent long term non lethal but debilitating damages.
Unfortunately the bureaucratic apparatus has chosen to overplay the vaccines hand and build up a convenient scapegoat for when the vaccines prove to be less effective than originally claimed. The correct and ethical course of action is for everyone to undergo the same level of social protection measures.
So yeah, this shit will never end until countries that aren't dependent on tourism actually start to care about it.
The first case in HK only showed up on fourth PCR test on a fully vaccinated individual in mandatory quarantine.
Thread by website dev: https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1464223178776059919
Send shivers down your spine
Shrieking skulls will shock your soul
Seal your doom tonight
This will only be solved or contained once we vax the developing world, so that we curb and slow down the emergence of variants.
Problem is that nobody in the developed world wants to be found with their briefs down and no vaccine availibility so the West is stockpiling jabs for people who essentially don't want it.
The west has been stuck around 67-70% for months now, with no tangible progress.
Those jabs, are the "use it or lose it" kind, if a vaccine resistant variant emerges in the 3rd world, all those stockpiles won't do any good, at that point for nobody.
Meanwhile, our schools remain fully packed, with no additional resources for air quality, and the government have even told schools not to inform parents of COVID cases in classrooms.
I can't help but wonder if all this cack-handedness is in relation to the contracts Pfizer "negotiated" with governments - https://www.citizen.org/article/pfizers-power/
PS Bill Gates is still responsible for an almost incalculable amount of harm, because of his actions against free and libre software and small businesses.
Free and libre software was always doomed because people who are worth their weight in gold due to their programming abilities want a nice mansion in Naples, FL with a nice dock and a 40 footer boat , not just a tap on their shoulders for a job well done.
.. Then why did Bill have to try so incredibly hard to fuck them up?
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-...
It's not just the matter of shipping out vaccines to the developing world.
Not saying the factors you brought up aren’t important. They are, but it’s not so simple.
You also can't vaccinate everyone at once. Vaccinating the world inevitably takes years, not months.
That leaves a lot of room for mutations. I don't see logistically how you get over that, you just can't. It sounds good but I don't see the practical solutions.
(And then we haven't even talked about cross infection with animals, deers are now 80% infected or something with covid? What happens when they cross over back with some new variant?)
If a large portion of the population is vaxxed, it stops spreading as much even among the unvaxxed, which reduces opportunity to mutate.
Deer don't have the same selective pressure as we do.
But there is a multiplicative effect - the sparser unvaxxed people become, the less general spread there will be.
The vaxxed are still spreading and it is true they cause selection, but this has been well studied and widespread vaccination absolutely would help reduce the rate of mutation.
I don't understand how this could be. Studies have shown that peak viral load is the same for vaccinated/unvaccinated, that means roughly the same number of replicative cycles in vaccinated as in unvaccinated. Each replication is a chance for the virus to aquire mutations, so same number of replicative cycles in vaccinated/unvaccinated means same rate of mutation in vaccinated/unvaccinated.
Spread is also less common among the vaxxed as I said, so even if it turns out to be no difference in load, there is still less opportunity for selection.
https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1462816243245719558?t=9OCuB...
How so? Load means number of virus particles. Number of virus particles increases with the number of replication cycles. The probability of mutation increases with the number of replications. So, same number of replication cycles, (roughly) same chance of mutation.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2786040
The science around viral dynamics re: viral loads is much more uncertain than this - so I am not saying it is definite that the viral loads are less, only that there is both a mechanism and some evidence to suggest it is either less or quicker to go down (but the evidence here is mixed and it likely wears off).
But nonetheless, the science on transmissibility - even with breakthrough, is more certain.
Here[0]'s a study from Nov 19th, saying that:
No significant differences were detected in duration of RT-PCR positivity among fully vaccinated participants (median: 13 days) versus those not fully vaccinated (median: 13 days; p=0.50), or in duration of culture positivity (medians: 5 days and 5 days; p=0.29).
[0] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.12.21265796v...
Please provide some citations to back up your claims.
A few citations on why the evidence leans towards reducing the spread being more effective at reducing variant selection: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1462816243245719558?t=9OCuB... Here is a citation regarding viral load. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4
Also, the vaccine has been shown to reduce viral load which has an impact on rate of mutation even if you are infected.
This doesn't seem to be the case⁰:
A new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive for the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.
When they analyzed the data, the researchers found wide variations in viral load within both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, but not between them. There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.
⓪ - https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim... (Link to study in the article)
It takes multiple people among one's friends and family dropping like flies to convince people in vaccine-hesitant places with ample supply (e.g. Bulgaria) to chose to get vaccinated.
Also it wouldn't hurt if vaccines were actually effective at preventing infection (rather than allowing infection but preventing severe disease)... and if they lasted more than half a year.
If the global Covid #s are accurate - the majority of the Covid infections happening are in the developed world.
It'd be great if we could stop the spread in the developing world - but we need to stop it in the developed world, too - or else mutations are still bound to happen.
Careful here. There is no guarantee that once 95% of the world is vaccinated that this will be solved. Respiratory viral infections are notorious for mutating and spreading regardless of vaccines or treatment.
IMO its important not to simplify the situation and say if group A just did this than everything would be okay. Its quite possible this virus is simply here to stay and a multi array of treatments will hopefully continue to improve outcomes.
Well said. And at this point we should pray this doesn't turn into a Marek's disease replica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease#Prevention
I do agree that more dissent and conflicting expert opinions were needed in this crisis. Especially dangerous is the idea that "if only everyone did X", then all will be well. This is rarely true.
I think the government's role should be to transmit the best possible information available at the moment, give some strong recommendations and incentives (and change them when new information comes to light), but never use force and coercion. It simply doesn't work in the long run.
I'm not going to ban you right now, because I did notice a few previous comments that weren't doing this—though I had to look pretty hard for them. If you keep this up, though, we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Especially true since the virus lives in animals, so it will never be eradicated.
We could vaccinate all of those. If we needed to do the last 4% of wild animals, I'm betting we could vaccinate more than half of those too.
There are remarkably few mamallian species with > 1m population. Virtually all are grazing animals, sea mammals, or rodents.
I'm not sure what species SARS-COV-2 is compatible with, though I've mostly heard of animals > 5kg mass (e.g., domesticated cats, dogs, deer, wildcats), with the very notable exception of bats.
The virus has been detected in 20--40% of sampled deer in the US in multiple states, which is a particularly bad sign.
If it's gained foothold in rodent populations ... well, it could be around for a while.
From April of 2021:
Results obtained from experimental studies indicate that animal species such as cats, ferrets, raccoon dogs, cynomolgus macaques, rhesus macaques, white-tailed deer, rabbits, Egyptian fruit bats, and Syrian hamsters are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and that cat-to-cat and ferret-to-ferret transmission can take place via contact and air. However, natural infections of SARS-CoV-2 have been reported only in pet dogs and cats, tigers, lions, snow leopards, pumas, and gorillas at zoos, and farmed mink and ferrets. Even though human-to-animal spillover has been reported at several instances, SARS-CoV-2 transmission from animals-to-humans has only been reported from mink-to-humans in mink farms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8128218/?report...
That's not to say that broader transmission isn't possible (the abstract doesn't mention deer, and I'm aware they're found to be infected). The science is still being established.
If the scenario is that they'd still have their mRNA IP if they had decided not to make a vaccine, that is not the incentive structure we want to setup.
It's also not where the constraint lies.
Cases have been surging for at least a month in 70-95% vaccinated countries. It is absolutely clear at this point that these vaccines will not eradicate covid. This madness over vaccines needs to end.
The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well. In many parts of the US life is effectively back to normal - and if ICUs are still out of capacity after two years of this pandemic then clearly there's a different, more readily solvable problem. Covid is not going anywhere but the hysteria is not justified - people are dramatically overestimating the risks.
Also I don’t think anybody has said vaccines are going to eradicate covid, it is just a matter of saving peoples lives from completely preventable suffering and death.
In short, it's never been about saving the population in general, although that is a desirable side effect. The entire lock down and vaccination push has been about preserving the healthcare system. Doctors and nurses take many years to make, it's not exactly a quick fix.
I don't see coronavirus going anywhere.
...or get fired because of vaccine mandates. Let's not forget about that, because it really does put the lie to the underlying concern here. Are folks worried about "health system collapse", or are they just indiscriminately terrified?
If you're truly worried about the former, then it probably doesn't make a ton of sense to place a vaccination mandate on a group of people who largely got infected and recovered early in the pandemic -- at least offer recognition of natural immunity for health care workers!
While it is probably an under-count, it appears that Covid has killed at least 5 million.
Public health measures and vaccines have prevented a rather spectacular number of deaths as we have worked to find a way to coexist with this virus.
It seems likely that with a sufficient number of infections and waves, yes, humans would eventually force Covid to evolve in the direction of other more-benign viruses. The question at hand is really: how many waves and variants are we willing to tolerate to get there (and how much human suffering is acceptable?)?
We have tools and tactics that can help to speed the end of the pandemic and decrease the number of people who die. We should use them well.
You can't just spawn medical personnel, especially in the conditions that are prevalent due to Covid cases ( lots of work, burnout, etc.). It literally takes years to educate medical personnel, you can't just YOLO it.
> The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well.
You're begging the question here. As best as we can tell, variants tend to come up when individual people mount a marginally effective immune response to the virus -- just enough to keep it in check but not enough to eradicate it. Effectively, they become a walking "gain of function" experiment.
Vaccines help at the outset by strengthening the immune response. They also help on a statistical basis by simply reducing the background rate of covid in a society. Given the development of new mutations with vaccine availability, we'd be likely to see as many or more mutations without widespread vaccination. If "covid will pass" without vaccination, then it will pass faster with, and the reverse implication is not necessarily true.
Remember, while the media often calls variants of concerns "vaccine escapes," the real effect is immune escape. If a new variant is more likely than average to cause a breakthrough case in a vaccinated person, it's also more likely than average to cause a reinfection in a recovered person.
If you want to be optimistic, then you can still hold out hope that new, more infectious variants may be less severe. The "human gain of function experiment" process for creating variants would select for both infectivity and non-severity. However, I do not have any data on the relative severity of B.1.1.529, and summer/early fall reporting on Delta suggested that it tended to cause somewhat more severe illness than Covid Classic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic
There hasn't been limited international travel for a long time.
Further, the world should be reacting to Covid at the global level. So far it’s like we’re not even addressing the beast on the turf it’s attacking us. And the price to do so, say 70 billion USD at a cost of 10$/dose (which it probably isn’t), is nothing compared to the reacting we’re seeing here today and will continue to see.
I think it takes some exceptionally motivated reasoning to believe that Mr. Gates is doing this because he only wants money.
Note: PhRMA is a lobbying group.
We could have 100% worldwide vaccination including animal reservoirs and still get mutations.
There is no easy out here unless we develop sterilizing immunity. Life is just a bit more dangerous now and that's that.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/zealand-once-paragon-covid-zero-0...
Don't forget that, yes, a certain percentage of that remaining 10% have either natural immunity or aren't going to experience symptoms.
I'm pretty skeptical at this point that any doubling-down is going to lead to anything but more doubling-down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
But if I donate 10 billion to promote child education does not make me an expert on it.
I am however, aware of some his efforts to restrict global access to vaccines something that will definitely be shown to be a mistake as new Covid mutations emerge outside of the rich "triple vaccinated world"
"How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines" https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl...
BTW, with some of the newly designed vaccines, if the virus mutates, the vaccine can be rapidly changed to respond to that (because it's sequence based). That changes things a lot.
...and also don't need it (boosters for healthy, young people). The WHO has repeatedly begged the western world to stop prioritizing boosters for healthy people, but the west continues to do this, instead of getting shots to the rest of the world:
https://archive.md/BnEtn#a-scandal-who-says-the-rate-of-boos...
This all seems to be a tragic attempt by politicians to appease their terrified base, coupled with incompetent scientists who continue to pursue eradication as a goal.
I do think the politicians are getting terrified. They have been incompetent since at least the 90's. Until now, first world circumstances were good enough that nobody cared much.
Corona changed that. There is a need for coordination on a massive scale, and they simply aren't up to it. You can't blather your way out of Covid. People are looking at them, and it's almost impossible to notice they aren't good for just about anything.
Agreed about the politicians being terrified, but I tend to be more sanguine: this is a modern re-telling of Canute and the tide, but the leaders aren't intelligent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide
The people are demanding that the tides be pushed back, and the leaders are doing the bidding of the people (and CNN is on 24/7, with Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon telling people that the tides are coming to get them and their children.)
The original sin here was giving them the power to take away our fundamental rights in the first place. The rest was sadly predictable.
No, not all elderly people -- I was careful to put "healthy" in there, and I meant it. Honestly, I probably should have added "not obese" as well. There is not enough risk stratification happening in discussions of this illness.
But sure, at a high level, if we want to put third doses in the arms of people over 65, I think that's more evidence-based than the current recommendations.
"The wise person reduces the importance of governments And simplifies the modes of living, So that people use fewer tools and wares And treasure simplicity in their lives, So that, though there are vehicles, People do not take them. And, though there are weapons, People do not carry them. And, though there are records, Tying knots will serve the record-keeping purpose. Thus, the highest political achievement is one In which people savor their food, Like the beauty of their clothes, Appreciate their safe and peaceful homes, Enjoy their social customs; And in which roosters and dogs Can be heard between countries; But people, all their lives, Have no need to go across the borders." - Translated by Liu Qixuan, Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi
[1] relative to bubonic plague, smallpox, polio, etc.
I’m not saying that vaccine availability isn’t a problem anywhere in the emerging world but it’s not the only issue.
https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/146401292663384064...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/25/the-rules-of-c...
https://nitter.kavin.rocks/AdamJKucharski/status/14640129266...
I don’t dismiss what they have to say entirely, they have expertise and they don’t publish wrong facts. But they are sort of like the Economist magazine. You know what they’ll say before you read it.
Growing up on cartoons has conditioned me to trust talking animals, but I think she's probably right about the risks. The variants have shown no meaningful ability to change what the vaccines target.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/11/26/europe-s-first-reported-...
She argued India hit herd immunity right before their delta wave. And about a month ago said the pandemic was finally done. (She says this every few months)
It seems likely that people are overinterpreting the graph that's been going around. We just don't know at this point. There's not much that the average person can do anyway, besides getting vaxxed, wearing a mask, and maybe not traveling internationally.
Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1464058581502738435.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1463797898446049285.html
> Thoughts: Yes, this variant has a high # of spike mutations, & a few known to cause changes. But, we've seen previous variants that looked worrying & never took off. We should watch & wait for more data to estimate how concerning this is.
> Important thing to keep in mind: - SA has recently had relatively low cases - this may leave a void which a new variant can spread into more easily - it likely hasn't had to compete with Delta. In other places, where Delta rages, it may not be as fit.
> Important thing to keep in mind: - We don't know what other factors may be helping spread, for example, an event or recent behaviour change - SA has a low vax rate - 28% 1dose, 24% 2dose. Immune evasion may not be needed to spread. Fitness could differ in higher-vax countries.
...
I'm very skeptical because Omicron has P681H at the FCS which was already displaced by P681R everywhere. This looks like backwards evolution.
It may have evolved in an HIV/AIDS patient in South Africa and adapted itself to in-host immune evasion, and established itself in South Africa into a relative vacuum of spread via founder effects, luck and whatever forces are driving the roughly 6-month cycles of waves that we tend to see. That doesn't mean that it is going to be able to outcompete Delta.
Of course it may acquire P681R through mutation or recombination or Delta could pick up some of its novel mutations, or maybe P681H makes a comeback because it gets worse in combination with mutations elsewhere in the genome. Everything is still on the table from this being a flash-in-the-pan that disappears once its faces significant competition from delta, up to it becoming worse. And I may be somewhat downplaying the risks due to everyone else overly assuming the risks when we have no useful information.
It feels like we will live in this dystopian neo-fascist world where you have no right for freedom of movement and right to privacy anymore for a while.
If I knew the Western world would screw this much I would have relocated to China where I can at least get some benefit from all these ridiculous rules.
What are those benefits?
In the former life is like 2019 most of the time.
(A lot of places pretend they’re like 2019 but it isn’t the same. You see the effects in hospitals)
The west focuses too much on those X people have died of covid imo. A death is a singular not a plural experience. X people dying means X people individually experiencing dying - we all die eventually - and we all have to cope with deaths of close ones. That's a fact of life. For one person dying - the process is not better or worse if more or less people are virtually dying chronologically close by or of a similar cause. X people dying is a political and economic quantity - and many people dying especially old and weak ones is not necessarily economically, politically and two weeks later socially a bad thing.
So, Africa and Asia will do pretty well compared to us.