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Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

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Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#231

Post by icedchai »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #219
evgen wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying it is certain, but there is a distinct class of people who expect everything to go back to the way it was and to do so immediately. They need to consider the possibility that things might _never_ return to the way they were. It is possible that all of the vaccines will work better than we expect and covid-19 will become a mostly-controlled intermittent disease that eventually becomes background noise…

I think you're misunderstanding the question. Many of the components of "back to normal" are about voluntary compliance with disease control measures. For example, I currently hang out with friends only outdoors or in very small groups - not because I couldn't do more, or because I'm afraid to, but because I'm hoping to prosocially blunt the spread of disease. Right now, I've already started going to restaurants (alt…

If you told people in March, 2020, that this would still be going on over a year from now, and likely 18+ months from now, what do you think the reaction would be? "You're crazy"???

Trump was talking about "reopening" things for Easter last year. He should've said Easter, 2022.

I was looking back at some old texts from a friend, last year around this time... "I hope this isn't going on 6 months from now."

People want to be optimistic. We need to prepare people for reality.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#232

Post by irq11 »

lamontcg wrote: post #121
irq11 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not possible to stop all strains. SARS-CoV2 has multiple zoonotic reservoirs, transmits easily, and persists in the population via asymptomatic infection. We have eradicated one human virus in all of history, and it took a highly effective vaccine and a hundred years. The long tail is very long.

It is still important to stop this particular strain and to achieve sufficient vaccination levels to achieve herd immunity. That immunity will likely be durable for many years (based on the somewhat recent study of HCoV-229E). That will force the virus to mutate to achieve true escape immunity (a strain, not a variant, which can reinfect everyone all over) which will likely come at a cost to fitness, since one or two…

For all the reasons I cited above, we are not going to “stop this strain”.

Covid is endemic. It is not going away. It doesn’t meet any of the standards set up by the WHO for eradication, and even if it did, it would take decades of intensive work, on par with what we’ve been doing for polio.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#233

Post by irq11 »

Fomite wrote: post #208
hu3 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what virus we eradicated?

Smallpox and Rinderpest. Polio and Measles are doable, and at this point more logistical and political problems than biological ones.

The “logistical” and “political” problems being that they’re endemic in countries with major political and economic instability, where the locals have a bad tendency to kill the people doing the vaccinations.

It isn’t a trivial problem. And oh yeah: Covid is in those countries now, too.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#234

Post by refurb »

WalterBright wrote: post #133

We've been vaccinating people since December. There ought to be statistical evidence now of whether and how much vaccinated people still get sick from Covid and its variants. Why do we still hear that epidemiologists have no idea about this? For example, everyone being tested for covid or being admitted to the hospital for covid, should be asked if they've been vaccinated, when, and which vaccination. 70 million peop…

How do you collect the data? How do you validate it? How do you make sure your treated and control arm are balanced?

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#235

Post by mikedilger »

reissbaker wrote: post #220
offby37years wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every offical that was selling the initial lockdown. Just have to get the R0 below 1, remember? You really think the masses would have been OK with a year of lockdowns and the despair that entails up front? Your conclusions don't match reality. States like Florida have open stadiums and are fairing the same as states like California that insist on totalitarian overreach.

California has done somewhat better than Florida overall — and the vast, vast majority of cases in California came from Southern California, where the lockdown and mask rules were largely not followed. California is 40+ million people; it's basically two Floridas. The northern one followed the rules, the southern didn't, and you can see very clearly which way resulted in fewer cases and deaths. Northern California ha…

post hoc distinction

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#236

Post by toolz »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #201
yashap wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have real world results, and they’re mostly very good. For example, analysis of the real world effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel: > The latest analysis from the MoH proves that two weeks after the second vaccine dose protection is even stronger – vaccine effectiveness was at least 97% in preventing symptomatic disease, severe/critical disease and death. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/pres…

Note however that Israel has closed its borders tightly, so Israel can't tell us much about the vaccines' effects on variants that haven't entered that country yet.

I've only seen reporting suggesting that every variant listed as a "variant of concern" from the CDC is present in Israel. So their data should be good.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#237

Post by Fomite »

irq11 wrote: post #233
Fomite wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallpox and Rinderpest. Polio and Measles are doable, and at this point more logistical and political problems than biological ones.

The “logistical” and “political” problems being that they’re endemic in countries with major political and economic instability, where the locals have a bad tendency to kill the people doing the vaccinations. It isn’t a trivial problem. And oh yeah: Covid is in those countries now, too.

I never said they were trivial, and have argued exactly the opposite elsewhere. But it remains that they are logistical and political challenges, not biological ones.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#238

Post by selimthegrim »

Fomite wrote: post #214
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #169

I am very clueless on the vaccine topic (not a denier of covid or anti vaxxer). All I know is from listening to some interviews with a scientist in the field. But i still do not know what is the definition of "effective vaccine". What does it do? If you have covid and take the vaccine, will the covid go away? Are you still contagious after having the vaccine or can you still get the covid but without the bad effects?…

I'll take a swing at this, being an infectious disease epidemiologist. When people talk about the "effectiveness of the vaccine", what's actually happening is that they're talking about a smear of different things, which is why you're (justifiably) confused. There's a few different aspects to think about: 1) When people say things like "The Moderna vaccine is 95% effective", the statistic they're citing is that in a…

Thank you for your clear comment. I hope your tenure review has a positive outcome.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#239

Post by joshuamorton »

oblio wrote: post #178
offby37years wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdowns were just meant to be for two weeks to “flatten the curve”, remember?

Who ever said 2 weeks? They serve the exact same role they did at the start. If we'd open stadiums now the exact same thing will happen, that happened 1 year ago. Lockdowns will continue until we either reach herd immunity naturally or through vaccines or we have a treatment/mitigation for the disease.

No western nation, except perhaps italy briefly, had a lockdown like the initial suggestions were.

I won't say with confidence that a short, hard, lockdown would have solved things in the us, but such approaches did work in many other nations.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#240

Post by TMWNN »

yorwba wrote: post #71
throwaway894345 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is downvoted; it’s absolutely correct. European, Asian, and North/South American supply chains are internally integrated. A truck driver transports goods from the Czech Republic to France and unloads them at the destination. For New Zealand it’s not like the ship’s crew is unloading goods at the last mile. A similar effect is at play in Hawaii, but the latter can’t deny entry to US residents because…

> European, Asian, and North/South American supply chains are internally integrated. A truck driver transports goods from the Czech Republic to France and unloads them at the destination. But does that truck driver need to have direct contact with other people to do their job? Why can't they unload their cargo, sleep at a quarantine facility, and then drive a new truckload in the opposite direction, without an opport…

>Also, island nations still have internal traffic. What's different about the borders between parts of Australia that allowed them to be closed when European borders had to stay open?

Australian states' borders aren't like those between New York and New Jersey (or Colorado and Wyoming), or Belgium and the Netherlands. There are a handful of highways that can be and were completely blockaded, and otherwise the borders are completely empty desert. (Even on the highways, there are dire warning signs about having sufficient water/gasoline/supplies in the more remote parts.)

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