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Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

sciencemag.org

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Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#31

Post by version_five »

morpheos137 wrote: post #18
pizza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Every human that ever lives will die someday. A good life involves a prudent balancing of risks and costs. Nobody alive can ever be 100% safe before or after the advent of covid. Covid maybe a good thing if it forces mature adults to deal with their inevitable mortality like mature adults. Instead we have been seeing pervasive infantilisation of society. Safety has a cost. The world is not black and white. Disclaimer…

I think that the reaction we've seen was inevitable. It's less about covid in particular and more that (and I don't know a diplomatic way to say it) there was a risk averse, authoritarian, nanny-state, "we need to save people from themselves" advocate group waiting in the wings that just needed their cue to for the balance of power to shift and their views to be prioritized.

To be clear, I don't mean some coordinated cabal, I just mean that society's views have drifted that way, we haven't had anything bad happen for years, the significance of individual freedom has been forgotten, we're well into turning on ourselves anyway. And so now with a push, there is a new majority, and we're seeing politicians take advantage of strong views and fall in line to represent them, disregarding safeguards and norms that we previously had in place but were not updated to contemplate something like this.

And now viewpoints that would have been intolerant and completely out of line with western democracy, and ridiculed as some mid 20th century authoritarianism are suddenly applauded all over social media.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#32

Post by brodouevencode »

landemva wrote: post #23
refurb wrote: post #9

There were several prominent epidemiologists who said early on “Covid will end up like the flu, you’ll need a yearly vaccine, we’ll have new variants and we’ll get waves of infections through out the year”. And here we are.

I havent (needed) a flu shot in a couple decades. I'm not interested in yearly jabs. Better to lose the waist inches and high BMI. Few want the self-responsibility of healthy living. And I don't agree with headline of "grim", as it was obvious a year ago this was coming. Who lost any excess weight in the past year?

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Comorbidity is a fundamental driving factor in whether or not you survive this virus. We've not heard any recommendations from any health agency suggesting a healthier lifestyle would help - it most certainly would statistically speaking. And 18 months in I doubt we'll see anything like that because it has proven to not be politically expedient. (FWIW Ive been intermittent fasting with some pretty good success)

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#33

Post by totony »

anyfoo wrote: post #8
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Variant that achieve immune escape from vaccine-induced immunity are bound to propagate at a faster rate if most people are vaccinated.

Even if that variant is more lethal (from which you might expect a smaller R0), it might be prevalent because of an augmentation in R0 from vaccination (which might be lesser had people developed a more complete natural immunity).

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#34

Post by AndrewBissell »

smt88 wrote: post #17
jdhn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you've heard is misinformation. Vaccines reduce potential for mutation, which is both intuitive and borne out by data.

That's neither intuitive nor true in all cases.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog...

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#35

Post by sneak »

graderjs wrote: post #30
berkut wrote: post #27

There seems to be some evidence that having a longer duration between the first and second doses provides better long-term protection, i.e. gaps of 7+ weeks, compared to the 3+ weeks the US and Israel have generally done. NZ is currently thinking about increasing the gap to > 6 weeks because of this. I wonder how much that would affect things.

I heard that as well. My feeling is that with all the treatments we are deploying against the virus, one thing we are doing is creating a selective pressure, forcing it to evolve to promote more resistant and transmissible variants. Whether those transmissible variants also contain higher mortality might be a crapshoot game of chance, but I don't hear this sort of idea spouted a lot and I think it's worth considering…

Increased transmission is worse than increased fatality rate, counterintuitively, as it's the same percentage deaths of a much much higher number infected - resulting in higher numbers of absolute deaths than if the CFR increased without an increase of transmissibility.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#37

Post by graderjs »

danielodievich wrote: post #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…

I don't know if we have this, but it would be good if we had a technology that enhanced your body's immune system to identify and kill viruses, rather than prime it to respond to a particular viral signal, that then may need to be updated as the virus changes (that's how I understand how vaccines work, but that could be false). You might think it's a subtle difference, but I think the former technology would be leaning into the body's existing ability to form a variety of antigens for viruses it encounters, and boosting its defense/offense against those, rather than 'handing out a series of police composite sketches', and saying 'Be On the Look Out for this specific guy, he might be coming through here.' The former could be more alike to enhancing predictive policing and profiling abilities, and beefing up response and enforcement capabilities.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#38

Post by pizza »

morpheos137 wrote: post #26
pizza wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well let's talk about infantilization then: I don't mind fearing or being at peace with death. Our society could use that. It's just that we're in a global plague right now and a large chunk of people just want to do whatever they want no matter if others are affected by their actions. Basically a stage of development such as children before they realize others are also people. It's like ten people walking a tightrop…

I would respectfully submit that the death rate of covid does not justify the scale of the response. It is unreasonable to shut down society for a disease whose median age victim is about 80 and whose whole population case fatality rate is in the low single digit percent at worse. The elderly and well off want to minimize their risk at the expense of the young and the poor. Who do you think delivered your Amazon pack…

Wuhan has been reopened for a long time now. We had every piece of information to make a good decision at the time in February 2020. Now we are thrashed about in a sea of half-measures, societal tension, and the total closing up of public life. We were so lost even by the time the CDC was encouraging people to not wear masks because it'll give you higher risk of contracting covid. Now our future's truly new.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#39

Post by weaksauce »

anyfoo wrote: post #3
jdhn wrote: 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…

the fact that the delta variant came from a country that didn't have widespread vaccines dispels this notion.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#40

Post by graderjs »

sneak wrote: post #35
graderjs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that as well. My feeling is that with all the treatments we are deploying against the virus, one thing we are doing is creating a selective pressure, forcing it to evolve to promote more resistant and transmissible variants. Whether those transmissible variants also contain higher mortality might be a crapshoot game of chance, but I don't hear this sort of idea spouted a lot and I think it's worth considering…

Increased transmission is worse than increased fatality rate, counterintuitively, as it's the same percentage deaths of a much much higher number infected - resulting in higher numbers of absolute deaths than if the CFR increased without an increase of transmissibility.

Ah, that's a great and simple and direct explanation of that. Thanks, I'm gonna try to remember that.
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