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Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

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Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#3
post #2

Is this necessarily a bad thing? If it protects the vast majoriy of people from going into the hospital and they gain additional immunity from covid, then I don't really see a downside.

A less effective vaccination keeps COVID around longer and farther than a more effective one, though, giving the virus more time and population surface to mutate into further variants. (But still less than no vaccination.)

I'm not an expert in this, so I cannot say how significant that issue is, but this is at least one potential downside that I am seeing to the vaccination being weaker for that variant.

EDIT: To clarify since some have misunderstood: I did not assert that the vaccination causes higher mutation, quite the opposite. I asserted that the absence of vaccination (entirely or effectively) gives more opportunity for mutation. I understand now that there are higher order effects that make this more complex.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#4
I am good friends with 3 doctors, and talk to them a lot about the amazing science behind the vaccines and the incredible speed with which those were designed and developed. All agree it was done at pretty much the software speed - custom designed on the computer in weeks and then built to order - and both them and I think it's pretty neat.

It is very refreshing to talk to them because they, being good doctors, deal calmly and reasonably with probabilities rather than absolutes.

Very early, even before general public could get vaccines, all 3 of them told me to expect something like that - the virus mutates, it is expected to develop, the mutation for reproductive number going up is likely to occur - and it did - and the vaccines will likely be needing to adjust.

Even the highest levels of vaccination are no protection, and I am pretty tiny Israel in a sea of the largely unvaccinated is going to be swamped.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#5
post #3
post #2

Is this necessarily a bad thing? If it protects the vast majoriy of people from going into the hospital and they gain additional immunity from covid, then I don't really see a downside.

A less effective vaccination keeps COVID around longer and farther than a more effective one, though, giving the virus more time and population surface to mutate into further variants. (But still less than no vaccination.) I'm not an expert in this, so I cannot say how significant that issue is, but this is at least one potential downside that I am seeing to the vaccination being weaker for that variant. EDIT: To cla…

That's a fair critique. I feel like I've heard concerns about the potential for the virus to mutate because of the high level of vaccinations, but like you, I don't know how significant of an issue that is.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#6
post #3
post #2

Is this necessarily a bad thing? If it protects the vast majoriy of people from going into the hospital and they gain additional immunity from covid, then I don't really see a downside.

A less effective vaccination keeps COVID around longer and farther than a more effective one, though, giving the virus more time and population surface to mutate into further variants. (But still less than no vaccination.) I'm not an expert in this, so I cannot say how significant that issue is, but this is at least one potential downside that I am seeing to the vaccination being weaker for that variant. EDIT: To cla…

It's going to mutate regardless of how many people are vaccinated. The entire point is to make it so that people don't have the runaway immune system responses that are melting lungs and brains.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#7
post #2

Is this necessarily a bad thing? If it protects the vast majoriy of people from going into the hospital and they gain additional immunity from covid, then I don't really see a downside.

People are still dying from breakthrough cases. Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta. Not to go full scaremonger but we don't know that much about long covid at this point. Plus the CDC admits that there is likely an undercount of people who got COVID post-vaccination https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...

It's an "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" type of situation

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A less effective vaccination keeps COVID around longer and farther than a more effective one, though, giving the virus more time and population surface to mutate into further variants. (But still less than no vaccination.) I'm not an expert in this, so I cannot say how significant that issue is, but this is at least one potential downside that I am seeing to the vaccination being weaker for that variant. EDIT: To cla…

It's going to mutate regardless of how many people are vaccinated. The entire point is to make it so that people don't have the runaway immune system responses that are melting lungs and brains.

Is that true? Intuitively, the more virus exists (in absolute numbers, even), the more virus may potentially mutate into worse variants. More infected people -> more individual virus instances, each with a given chance to mutate, and more time for that mutation to occur (because expired virus is replenished with fresh virus in available hosts; though you can probably fold this into higher virus numbers instead with the same result).

I'm gladly corrected if I missed something!

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#10
If we had effective treatments and OTC therapies for this illness, the pressure to vaccinate against every resurgence and new mutation would basically disappear. With so much social difficulty with vaccines, this seems like the most likely long term path. Where's my cherry flavored Covidquil?
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