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Is the main problem, the unvaccinated, or that the Delta (and co.) variants are still, too dangerous for vaccinated people? Or is it the fear, that they will get more dangerous?
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?
Not implausible at all. Mutation rate is proportional to the number of infected. Third world countries have barely even started vaccinating. There's a lot of room for nightmare scenarios. Which is why I think it was a bone-headed move to not suspend patent protection on the vaccines. Thanks Bill Gates!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/have-gates-...
https://apnews.com/article/drug-companies-called-share-vacci...
https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl...
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").
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/new-sars-cov-2-varia...
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").
This is getting at “saying the quiet part out loud.” For a variety of reasons media and influential organizations have avoided considering the upper bound on virility and mortality (? Not sure the right term) of covid. But to think delta is it would be some kind of miracle. It would mean we are going through the worst of it, and that after we handle delta globally, people can worry about other things. But it doesn’t…
The confusion arises because the Latin word "vir" means "man" (specifically of male sex, as opposed to human), and the similar word "virus" means poison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right which is why achieving any meaningful level of herd immunity is now effectively impossible. Thus we're all likely to get infected eventually. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu... Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing death for all variants.
All likely to be infected, I certainly believe. But I've been operating under the assumption that while vaccination won't prevent you from infection, it is still highly effective (90%+) at reducing symptoms, even with Delta. I'm certainly open to learning if this is false, however. I've just seen statistics that over 95% of people hospitalized are unvaccinated.
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…
There are some confounding factors to that though, I think? Infectivity post mortem (as seen with plague) and time lag between infectivity and symptoms appearing allowing for longer periods of asymptomatic transmission. Both variables that mean the spread of a mutation and it's lethality need not be linked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Receptor binding affinity can also increase too, or like Alpha did, further suppress interferon production. Lots of ways...
That reminds me of this scary preprint from January: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.06.425392v3 "in vitro evolution enhancing binding by 600-fold provides guidelines towards potentially new evolving mutations with even higher infectivity" :/
I see the sentiment here expressed, that Covid is far from over. To be honest, I stopped following news since being fully vaccinated some time ago, so I am kind of ignorant here. Is the main problem, the unvaccinated, or that the Delta (and co.) variants are still, too dangerous for vaccinated people? Or is it the fear, that they will get more dangerous?
Now what's our plan exactly? Get vaccinated every 6 - 12 months indefinitely and always wear masks? What's our goal and what's our new normal?