SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners • Hacker News Board

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#151

Post by native_samples » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #135

jsbdk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I want to vaccinate if I'm still going to get restricted? I mean the whole deal here was that if we got vaccinated we'd be back to normal life. If that wasn't the case they should've been sincere up front and most of us wouldn't have gotten vaccinated.

To prevent yourself and others from getting (the severe form of) the virus. I can assure you that most people would still have gotten vaccinated. Personally what I would like is roughly what we've had in the UK for the previous few months. The ability to do mostly normal life, but with restrictions on large events and mandated precautions such as masks. Along with vaccinations that would probably have been a sustaina…

"what I would like is roughly ... the ability to do mostly normal life, but with restrictions on large events and mandated precautions such as masks. Along with vaccinations that would probably have been a sustainable state."

To be clear, are you stating you would like all large events to be permanently banned forever.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#152

Post by himinlomax » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:28 AM UTC

jsbdk wrote: post #121

aranw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens I've wondered this ever since the UK changed it's approach and now that we've got to a state where there is pretty much no restrictions. I think scientists around the world also have this concern with the UK's approach

Why would I want to vaccinate if I'm still going to get restricted? I mean the whole deal here was that if we got vaccinated we'd be back to normal life. If that wasn't the case they should've been sincere up front and most of us wouldn't have gotten vaccinated.

Why should I wear a seatbelt when I'm not planing on getting into a car accident?

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#153

Post by erdewit » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #139

Izkata wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One counterpoint that I’ve come across during my own review of the literature, is the idea that imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. This is what happened with "Marek's disease", a virus-caused disease in chickens. The vaccine was "leaky" and ended up selecting for a more deadly form, such that now all chickens worldwide have to be vaccinated for i…

1) All current variations of concern come from mostly unvaccinated countries. Apparently there's a serious issue with immunocompromised individuals and the vaccines may help prevent that: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma... 2) We can see with SARS and MERS that a more deadly form may actually reduce overall mortality, since the virus can't spread as effectively. However, we haven't had thi…

From the article:

> Analysis of samples from the patient showed that the virus evolved rapidly after the plasma therapy, developing mutations that changed how it could infect cells and resist antibodies.

Seems to be that the plasma therapy (injecting antibodies) is responsible here.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#154

Post by drdeca » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

dot1x wrote: post #144

dot1x wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, IMO there seems to be a growing public opinion that unvaccinated individuals are to blame for the increasing dominance of variants of concern (delta, gamma, etc). This is no coincidence. The media has been directed to _not_ blame vaccines for ANYTHING, as doing so would negatively impact their narrative. It's well known that people vaccinated with leaky vaccines are the breeding ground for super-bu…

Downvote as much as you want, the truth ain't changing :)

I didn’t downvote the original comment, but my understanding of the social conventions here is that complaining about downvotes is frowned upon.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#155

Post by standapart » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

becuzThrowaway wrote: post #130

standapart wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of abstract certainty present in this comment is truly astonishing. Please just cite the RCT on this.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33964222/

This is not an RCT. The work itself makes this very clear, it's observational, based on what we'll call "pseudo-voluntary" testing. Just provide the RCT for your claims-- this is necessary since the vaccine is known to be effective on a symptomatic level.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#156

Post by native_samples » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

ianlevesque wrote: post #86

timr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This one scared me since it was a large, relatively unbiased sample, with before-and-after imaging. It also showed brain damage even in mild cases of COVID19 in >10% of cases. It shows no such thing. It's an analysis of MRIs where the authors infer loss of gray matter in specific regions of the brain. This is in no way "brain damage", and representing it this way is leaping to wild conclusions. Lest you not believe…

Denial is quite a river these days. Where else are you going to get a brain imaging study with before and after data on thousands of people? If that's not persuasive and concerning to you I don't think anything will be.

Why should a "study" in the abstract automatically be persuasive and concerning? Scientists get paid to publish studies, so the literature is full of nonsensical studies that show correlations between anything and everything. User timr just explained to you why this specific study cannot be used to conclude anything, but you're saying he's the one in denial?

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#157

Post by 55555 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:30 AM UTC

audiometry wrote: post #59

throwawayboise wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always was that for the vast majority of people.

3mn Indian souls would disagree

That's a terrible loss, practically a genocide, but to be fair the parent said "the vast majority of people" and there's 1.4 billion people in India. In India, 151,000 people die every year just from car accidents, and ~4 million die each year from heart disease.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#158

Post by piva00 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:35 AM UTC

anshorei wrote: post #137

becuzThrowaway wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First off, we still haven't had the level of death that we had in 1918, and almost certainly won't. Second, the narrative of vaccinated individuals being major spreaders of this disease is false. The virus is evolving due to mutations occurring while hopping from one unvaccinated person to another, full stop.

There's two major metrics to measure the severeness: the mortality rate and the infection rate. I think that "we haven't had the level of death we had in 1918 so the pandemic is less severe" ignores the fact that COVID-19 is far more infectious and therefore in a sense more severe since it will be awfully hard to get rid of for that reason (if we can indeed never get rid of it the number of deaths will keep growing,…

Varicella is more infectious than SARS-CoV-2 and it's under control with vaccines, same pattern: spread through the air, R0 chickenpox > R0 COVID-19, vaccines help with immunity and even when infected developing a mild version of the disease.

There is hope, we might not get rid off it but if we could control chickenpox that is quite more infectious, we can have a little hope. Even more with more modern medicine.

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#159

Post by jstanley » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:35 AM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #139

Izkata wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One counterpoint that I’ve come across during my own review of the literature, is the idea that imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. This is what happened with "Marek's disease", a virus-caused disease in chickens. The vaccine was "leaky" and ended up selecting for a more deadly form, such that now all chickens worldwide have to be vaccinated for i…

1) All current variations of concern come from mostly unvaccinated countries. Apparently there's a serious issue with immunocompromised individuals and the vaccines may help prevent that: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma... 2) We can see with SARS and MERS that a more deadly form may actually reduce overall mortality, since the virus can't spread as effectively. However, we haven't had thi…

> All current variations of concern come from mostly unvaccinated countries.

Isn't it more significant not where they emerge (which is by random mutation) but where they do well? And don't they seem to do well in countries that have vaccinated more people?

Is it even particularly easy to say where a variant originated? Could the mutations happen multiple times independently?

Re: SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

#160

Post by native_samples » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:39 AM UTC

becuzThrowaway wrote: post #105

sschueller wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does this mean we made this pandemic worse than the one from 1918 when we didn't have a vaccine?

No. First off, we still haven't had the level of death that we had in 1918, and almost certainly won't. Second, the narrative of vaccinated individuals being major spreaders of this disease is false. The virus is evolving due to mutations occurring while hopping from one unvaccinated person to another, full stop.

The UK now has a similar test positivity rate to what it had in November 2020 yet a hugely vaccinated population.

If the vaccinated aren't spreading it then you're suggesting that the unvaccinated have become drastically more infectious for no apparent reason and in ways that don't show up in contract tracing data. I think the alternative explanations are more likely to be correct: the vaccine is actually not a vaccine in the traditional sense, it's more like a prophylactic. Vaccinated people aren't getting an immune response in the normal areas where it would usually enter and exit, like the nose and lungs, instead it's being injected into the arm.

Also, COVID tests don't actually detect COVID or even SARS-CoV-2, they detect RNA debris from destroyed SARS-CoV-2. Thus it's expected that if someone's body fights off the virus immediately if they're exposed to it, they will still test positive.