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Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

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Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#281

Post by m0llusk »

TheDong wrote: post #131
luxuryballs wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we learned should be not to decimate small businesses like tossing leaves to the wind “don’t worry we’ll build back better!” and let people decide their own risk taking. I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech. Literally you should not, in a free society, be able take such injurious actions b…

There's a massive difference between contagious diseases with exponential growth potential and the other freedoms you talk about. For a closer analogy than "what people are wearing or eating", what about "what people drive and how fast in public areas". The government introduced speed limits, regulations on vehicles, and driver licenses, all of which significantly limit who can drive what, and how fast. All of this i…

SARS-CoV2 is not capable of exponential growth. There is nearly one hundred years of epidemiology that shows lockdowns are not effective at containing the spread of highly contagious pathogens. Masks, hand washing, and distancing do help. Having authority does not excuse having a weak grasp of the science.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#282

Post by gregwebs »

rimliu wrote: post #199
gregwebs wrote: post #70

These articles are missing an important aspect of the vaccine: the immunity gained is non-sterilizing. [1] The vaccine stops the infection from becoming severe and spreading throughout the body, but it doesn't actually stop infection (and transmission) in the upper respiratory tract. So we don't have any evidence showing we can achieve herd immunity even with a 100% vaccination rate (this article is wrong). The only…

Transmission is greatly reduced.

I hope this is true. Do you have any studies to back this up? I see statements by government officials to this effect, but never any studies or data to back it up.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#283

Post by makomk »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #258
makomk wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand and Australia have had cases outside of quarantine despite every single traveller who enters those island nations being kept in hotel quarantine, tested multiple times, and being released only after the quarantine period ends. Some of those cases are directly traceable to quarantined travellers, some aren't. In any case, even those measures which aren't practical except in an island nation aren't effectiv…

China successfully followed the same strategy, so the strategy certainly can work for large, non-island countries. China had a few outbreaks (after Wuhan, obviously), but it responded to each one with quick restrictions on the affected location and mass testing of everyone in the region. That worked to contain these subsequent outbreaks. As a result, China has been essentially CoVID-19-free for about a year now.

It's hard to tell what on earth is going on in China because a lot of the information coming out of there seems... dubious. As you say, they've had a few outbreaks which they responded to with large-scale lockdowns and mass testing, but if you believe their reporting the mass testing generally didn't find any cases at all which (if accurate) would mean the whole thing was for nothing. This seems unlikely. There were also weird WTF moments like in-hospital spread in a major city in a border region with a known outbreak going undetected for way too long at a time where even western countries that were "failing" at testing had enough in place to detect that. Also, a lot of the information about the source of the outbreaks and their successful methods for eradicating Covid is really obvious propaganda. On the other hand, their hospital system doesn't seem to be collapsing under a mass of Covid cases either.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#284

Post by walterbell »

baxtr wrote: post #250
walterbell wrote: post #43

> the immune system has an array of other defenses... including antibodies that attack other parts of the virus, and, importantly, T-cells that attack the infected cells the virus hijacks in order to replicate. “What we’re seeing is that these variants don’t seem to affect T-cell immunity all that much and they [the T-cells] seem to be as effective in recognizing these variants as they do the original virus” People w…

I have done my PhD on T cell activation. The persistent focus of the media and even some of the science community on Antibody induced immunity was completely beyond me. T cells were largely simply ignored even though they play such a crucial role in the body’s immune response. Antibodies seem to be a concept much easier to grasp. Maybe we should call T cells "Police Cells or "Anti-Cells" instead. You know, some marke…

Good idea! Infographic, logo, spokesperson.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#285

Post by [deleted] »

erklik wrote: post #95
015a wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States has administered 2.3 million vaccination doses. Oh, lol no, not cumulatively. I mean Yesterday. We administered 2.3 million doses in about 14 daytime hours on March 12th. Naturally, the number of vaccinated individuals grows every day. That's what vaccinations do. But the number of doses we are administering every day is growing every day. One week ago, on March 8th, we administered about 2.05 milli…

>US will be one of the first countries back to normalcy I live in Australia. The country has been to normal for a long time now, and my state specifically had a lockdown at the start of the pandemic, and since August 2020, we have not had a major lock down (except for one week in Jan 2021 due to a outbreak scare) and have been living in normalcy since then. Just saying because it seems like people erasing and forgett…

[deleted]

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#286

Post by girvo »

walterbell wrote: post #284
baxtr wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done my PhD on T cell activation. The persistent focus of the media and even some of the science community on Antibody induced immunity was completely beyond me. T cells were largely simply ignored even though they play such a crucial role in the body’s immune response. Antibodies seem to be a concept much easier to grasp. Maybe we should call T cells "Police Cells or "Anti-Cells" instead. You know, some marke…

Good idea! Infographic, logo, spokesperson.

And a cute branded website, treat it like one of those named exploits perhaps?

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#287

Post by girvo »

makomk wrote: post #241
scott_w wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine the fatigue of what I’m currently going through of constantly locking down for 4 months at a time! Compared to that, having to lock down every couple of months for a week or two doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad. Oh, and we wouldn’t have 130,000 dead in the UK and 500,000+ dead in the USA!

A couple of weeks is basically the bare minimum. New Zealand seem to have gotten a little lucky with their latest outbreak; one or two people not noticing their symptoms, or going for a walk with someone different, or interacting for a little longer at a restaurant and they could easily have ended up having to lock down for months like Guernsey or the Isle of Man. (Arguably, it's still a little too soon to be sure th…

We did a 3 day lockdown in Brisbane to give our contact tracers time to track down a single case. It worked, too, which was neat.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#288

Post by girvo »

refurb wrote: post #166
jedberg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the answer I feel like it would take the courts a few weeks at least to figure it out. California (or more realistically Hawaii) could have had a full three week border closure before anyone settled the case law.

They certainly could have “closed” the border but how effective would it have been? How many road cross into CA? How many open fields? You’d need an army of hundreds of thousands to ensure nobody crosses.

I mean it’s not like the inter state borders in Australia aren’t absolutely huge, too...

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#289

Post by walterbell »

girvo wrote: post #286
walterbell wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea! Infographic, logo, spokesperson.

And a cute branded website, treat it like one of those named exploits perhaps?

Yep, it is competing for research resources and media attention.

This opinion piece used the phrase "T Cells: Warriors of SARS-CoV-2 Infection", https://www.cell.com/trends/immunology/fulltext/S1471-4906(2...

UK Science Museum 2-pager with diagrams (https://www.immunology.org/public-information/bitesized-immu...) and UCB lecture slides (http://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcb150/Lecture15/Lecture15(6...)

Maybe vendors (e.g. https://www.rndsystems.com/research-area/t-cell-kits) would support a T-cell microsite, with dedicated sections for science journalists, academics and industry scientists. A vendor created this poster on T-cell subsets: https://docs.abcam.com/pdf/immunology/t_cells_the_usual_subs...

This 2018 effort looks useful, https://github.com/hammerlab/t-cell-guide

> We provide practical hints and tips on basic cellular and molecular techniques for handling primary human T cells. We hope that this guide will serve as a reference point to evaluate, discuss, and improve current practices in T cell culturing and manipulation.

Oh wow, there are T cell cartoons :)

https://cellcartoons.net/character/cd8tcell & https://cellcartoons.net/character/cd4tcell

And a manga/anime called Cells at Work! (https://mangarock.to/manga/1684/cells-at-work/first-chapter#...) whose final (June 2021) installment covers Covid-19. There's also a character called Killer T Cell, https://cellsatwork.fandom.com/wiki/Killer_T_Cell_(Squad_Lea...

> Killer T Cell is loud, obnoxious, and quick-tempered, resulting in rivalries with many cells. He also despises it when a non-white blood cell forms a friendship or relationship with one of his kind. As an immature thymocyte he went through training at Thymus school, where apprentice cells like himself learn to become Mature Thymocytes.

Season 1 is streaming: https://www.netflix.com/title/81028791

Possible seeds for a github-pages microsite..

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#290

Post by type0 »

baxtr wrote: post #250
walterbell wrote: post #43

> the immune system has an array of other defenses... including antibodies that attack other parts of the virus, and, importantly, T-cells that attack the infected cells the virus hijacks in order to replicate. “What we’re seeing is that these variants don’t seem to affect T-cell immunity all that much and they [the T-cells] seem to be as effective in recognizing these variants as they do the original virus” People w…

I have done my PhD on T cell activation. The persistent focus of the media and even some of the science community on Antibody induced immunity was completely beyond me. T cells were largely simply ignored even though they play such a crucial role in the body’s immune response. Antibodies seem to be a concept much easier to grasp. Maybe we should call T cells "Police Cells or "Anti-Cells" instead. You know, some marke…

T cell activation is readily misunderstood even among some cell biologists. There's a lot of people in life science academia who desperately need to update their knowledge about the recent discoveries in Immunology.
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