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Is there any information on what the upper bound might be on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2? I think a lot of people just assume one big jump consumes most of the range, but we've seen at least three big jumps so far ("Doug", "Alpha", and "Delta").
Is it implausible to think that continued transmission and mutation at this rate will cause a catastrophic worsening of the pandemic to an extent several orders of magnitude above what it is now? Vaccination is effective in the current state of the pandemic, but what's to prevent the built-up immune response of humankind being wiped out if the virus adapts enough?
SARS-CoV-2 has four antigens. The existing vaccines stimulate the production of antibodies against only one of them, the spike protein. The existing vaccines are proving ineffective against Delta because it has mutated significantly enough that its spike protein does not cause a neutralizing immune response. They may even be causing ADE, as evidenced by the most recent data comparing Israel and Palestine.
To Palestinians the entire country of Israel is Palestine. Hence the chant from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.
US deaths peaked in January 2021, before Delta became prevalent in the US, before substantial vaccination, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph-...
US daily vaccines peaked in April 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-do...
India (origin of Delta) deaths peaked in May 2021, when their vaccination rate was less than 5%, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/#gra...
Is it implausible to think that continued transmission and mutation at this rate will cause a catastrophic worsening of the pandemic to an extent several orders of magnitude above what it is now? Vaccination is effective in the current state of the pandemic, but what's to prevent the built-up immune response of humankind being wiped out if the virus adapts enough?
In very early 2020, when I was following the news of the virus development in Wuhan, China, I felt like a conspiracy theorist pointing out to friends and coworkers that a bad epidemic spreading in one of the most crowded parts of the world. They thought it was ridiculous to say that hospitals were getting overwhelmed, people were being quarantined etc. Don't even think about suggesting it'll spread outside of China, or that the virus may have come from the lab that just so happened to also be in the origin of the epidemic, a lab which specialized in highly infectious diseases.
Not even 2 years later and where are we now? The entire world got sick and pretty much every country has done lockdowns/quarantines/shutdowns. Not to mention the lab theory of the virus origin still can't be ruled out.
Even after the pandemic started, people still had no problem sticking their head in the sand. It's not a big deal; it's 2020, we have technology and medicine and we'll just make a vaccine and get back to normal. Well now it's almost 2022 and somehow things just keep getting worse.
We can reasonably say the Black Death killed 30% of Europe's population. We can't reasonably say covid won't do the same. All optimistic projections so far have been proven wrong, so all we can say for sure is that humans are terrible at predicting the future.
Is it implausible to think that continued transmission and mutation at this rate will cause a catastrophic worsening of the pandemic to an extent several orders of magnitude above what it is now? Vaccination is effective in the current state of the pandemic, but what's to prevent the built-up immune response of humankind being wiped out if the virus adapts enough?
SARS-CoV-2 has four antigens. The existing vaccines stimulate the production of antibodies against only one of them, the spike protein. The existing vaccines are proving ineffective against Delta because it has mutated significantly enough that its spike protein does not cause a neutralizing immune response. They may even be causing ADE, as evidenced by the most recent data comparing Israel and Palestine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
SARS-CoV-2 has four antigens. The existing vaccines stimulate the production of antibodies against only one of them, the spike protein. The existing vaccines are proving ineffective against Delta because it has mutated significantly enough that its spike protein does not cause a neutralizing immune response. They may even be causing ADE, as evidenced by the most recent data comparing Israel and Palestine.
Palestine is ambiguous. I assume you mean Gaza or West Bank? To Palestinians the entire country of Israel is Palestine. Hence the chant from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.
Since the deadliest virus mutations kill their hosts, weaker virus mutations can spread (without killing their hosts) more quickly. US deaths peaked in January 2021, before Delta became prevalent in the US, before substantial vaccination, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph-... US daily vaccines peaked in April 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-do... India (origin…
Is there any information on what the upper bound might be on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2? I think a lot of people just assume one big jump consumes most of the range, but we've seen at least three big jumps so far ("Doug", "Alpha", and "Delta").
There is a “Doug” variant?!? Asking for a friend… EDIT So there is! Ha > And you can imagine, it was quite a mouthful. So, we started to call this D to G mutation ‘Doug’, and then any of the other virus sequences that didn’t have this mutation … we called ‘Douglas’, so it was sort of a bit of a private joke within the lab,” she said. “As more mutations came about, we’d come up with a person’s name for them.” https://…
Since the deadliest virus mutations kill their hosts, weaker virus mutations can spread (without killing their hosts) more quickly. US deaths peaked in January 2021, before Delta became prevalent in the US, before substantial vaccination, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph-... US daily vaccines peaked in April 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/us-daily-covid-vaccine-do... India (origin…
Deaths are down because we vaccinated all the old people who were dying in the first waves
Is it implausible to think that continued transmission and mutation at this rate will cause a catastrophic worsening of the pandemic to an extent several orders of magnitude above what it is now? Vaccination is effective in the current state of the pandemic, but what's to prevent the built-up immune response of humankind being wiped out if the virus adapts enough?
SARS-CoV-2 has four antigens. The existing vaccines stimulate the production of antibodies against only one of them, the spike protein. The existing vaccines are proving ineffective against Delta because it has mutated significantly enough that its spike protein does not cause a neutralizing immune response. They may even be causing ADE, as evidenced by the most recent data comparing Israel and Palestine.
Source https://twitter.com/rzioni/status/1426178482569109504