Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

biorxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 131 posts

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#101

Post by user5565567 »

dionian wrote: post #62
dougmwne wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are necessarily temporary measures. Life cannot go on forever with these restrictions in place. Either medical science will find a way to limit the danger or people will adapt to their new, more dangerous world. I am not an anti-masker, but asking for permanent social distancing is not realistic.

I think voluntary mask wearing becoming a new norm is fine with me

It should be noted that long term mask wearing does have adverse effects that not everyone seems to be aware of.

"Maskne" has been a huge problem for many, many people. The massive breakouts I and many, many others have sustained over the past 12 months will cause lifelong scarring and the emotional issues that come with that.

Another example is adverse effects related to deformation of nose and ear cartilage [0], which while primarily affecting children may still have adverse effects among the adult population (my little brother just had surgery to correct the exact ear protrusion noted in the article).

Frankly, herd immunity (either through vaccination or contraction) will be achieved and masks will stop being worn, or people will simply accept the dangers of another yearly virus (don't forget, Influenza still causes millions of hospitalization each year) and move on with their lives (which if you've traveled to certain parts of the country, many have).

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302120/

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#102

Post by discardedrefuse »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #92
discardedrefuse wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this on Wikipedia. "On 7 January 2021 it was reported that Pfizer researchers had found the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in tests involving 20 blood assays to be capable of affording protection against one of the 501.V2 variant mutations (N501Y, shared with variant B1.1.7). Further investigation was to be undertaken to ascertain the level of protection involved." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501.V2_v…

The next section in the article is what's important here: E484K mutation The E484K amino acid change, a receptor-binding-domain (RBD) mutation, was reported to be "associated with escape from neutralising antibodies" which could adversely affect the efficacy of spike protein-dependent COVID vaccines.[50][51] The E484K spike mutation was linked to a case of reinfection with the 501.V2 variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil,…

I read that. They're only speculating that this could impact vaccines that rely on the spike protein. They didn't actually test for that.

The links I posted show that testing with current mRNA vaccines against this exact variant are under way. Pfizer's (very small) initial tests results seem positive.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#103

Post by mc32 »

Loughla wrote: post #91
mc32 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say you produce wine in France. France has a new variant. We shut France down. You’re French and live there. You’re affected. I’m in Mauritania, I keep on working unaffected by your shutdown. You’re saying it’s preferable to have your economy, my economy and everyone else’s economy because... it’s better for you if we all get shut down?

No, I'm saying a local shut down in the economy may/does have impacts further reaching than the local economy, and that your statement is flawed. Shutting down local economies is exactly what shuts down global supply chains/economies. It's not like you can carve France out of the global economy and act like they don't exist for three months. It's not as simple as you're saying, is what my point is.

Ok I won’t dispute this assertion, I will assert that a focused local lockdown is better than a global lockdown.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#104

Post by dang »

beamatronic wrote: post #60
Loughla wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you lost me. How can we have an unfettered economy, not limited by lockdowns AND contain mutations regionally? These two statements you have made seem to be at odds with one another. Or am I overthinking/underthinking this?

With total and complete mask compliance.

Please stop repeating this. Repetition is tedious and lowers signal/noise ratio. HN is supposed to be for curiosity, and curiosity wants just the opposite.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Edit: also, can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments generally? It looks like you've been doing that a lot, and that's not what HN is for, for the same reason: it repels curiosity.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#105

Post by bluGill »

akiselev wrote: post #77
CyberRabbi wrote: post #32

Interesting... the common cold and the flu also tend to mutate to be resistant to past immunity. I wonder if we’re on a the cusp of finally finding cures for these types of rapidly mutating viruses.

The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season. Developing a vaccine for a new strain of the flu is pretty mechanical at this point but each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains that World Health Organization scientists predict will be the dominant strains causing the most damage (it gets reevaluated twice…

>The issue with the flu isn't that it rapidly mutates but that we can't quite predict which mutations will happen each season.

This doesn't make sense. Of course we cannot predict what mutation will happen. Are you trying to say we don't know which mutation take off? Even then the issue that we don't know what future mutation might take off is a problem.

> each seasonal flu vaccine is really a combination of three different strains

This year it was 4 different strains.

> it's impractical, even dangerous, to give them all of the strains at once

I've never heard this before. Can you provide a citation so I can verify it?

>The common cold is an even more extreme version of that process

There are a lot of different viruses for the common cold. There have been vaccines for them, but the odds of catching any one strain are so low that a vaccine against one isn't really significant.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#106

Post by jasonlaramburu »

ravenstine wrote: post #53
beamatronic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just wear a mask and social distance and not congregate indoors with random strangers for long periods of time

While those are certainly measures to take, they're a non answer. We need to return to some amount of noalcy, and none of those measures are up to snuff. Literally everyone where I live wears a mask and distances, yet cases are sky high. Somehow my grandfather caught the virus despite his assisted living home despite them being so locked down that we haven't been able to see him in person besides through a glass wind…

>We all get it. Yet people continue to get sick and die.

Is that because the interventions (masking, social distancing) are de facto ineffective, or because a critical mass of people simply ignores them?

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#107

Post by dang »

The submitted title ("New mutation of COVID19 strongly resistant to past immunity") broke the site guidelines by editorializing, and probably also by being misleading. Please don't do that. If you want to contribute your interpretation, that's fine, but do so in a comment—then your interpretation is on a level playing field with everyone else's. On HN, being the user to submit an article doesn't come with any special rights about how to frame it for others.

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#108

Post by bluGill »

lhorie wrote: post #72
CyberRabbi wrote: post #32

Interesting... the common cold and the flu also tend to mutate to be resistant to past immunity. I wonder if we’re on a the cusp of finally finding cures for these types of rapidly mutating viruses.

I mean, if flu vaccines are any indication, what is more likely is we never cure it, but we end up with yearly covid shots to gain immunity to each year's strain(s)

The flu mutates a lot faster than COVID. There is still hope we can vaccinate against it and be done. This depends on speed of getting the vaccines out, and preventing it from jumping to something else and then getting a foothold there where mutations can jump back.

We will know in a couple years how successful we are.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#109

Post by dnautics »

randcraw wrote: post #78
dnautics wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: E484K 1) it's in the spike protein. I think it's in the area that typically elicits antigen response. That's super bad news. If you look carefully, it's near the cleft of a representative antibody (fig 1a), and the buried surface area is high across the board on (clinically?) sampled antibodies (fig 1e), suggesting its importance. 2) it's a mutation that changes the charge state of one of the amino acid residues.…

But CAN you safely reformulate vaccines to include this new protein and introduce it widely into the population without knowing if this protein's antigen is already present in the body and might cause severe side effects? I think you can't. It's famously difficult to anticipate off-target effects of any novel antigen target. This can't be tested in-vitro. You have to repeat the full range of clinical trials with each…

> You have to repeat the full range of clinical trials with each reformulation that targets a new antigen.

Are you sure? I don't think we do this with the seasonal flu vaccine in general. It certainly wasn't a consideration in the CDC pandemic flu response fire drill (sequence antigen -> manufactured vaccine in ~2 weeks) that I got a sideline seat on.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

#110

Post by NeutronStar »

mikeymz wrote: post #94
binaryblitz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your entire life? IDK about you but I'm ok with getting a common cold or the flu once every few years to live a normal life.

Every few years? My experience is more like every 6 weeks in the winter. Even with lock down I have caught the second cold of the season. I am guessing you don't have kids

So you go and get vaccinated, don't force everyone to wear a mask forever and live in perpetual lockdown.
Post reply on HN