Live data from Hacker News

The mutation that helps Delta spread

nature.com

301–310 of 641 posts

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#301
post #224
post #151

Purely anecdotal but I'm double vaccinated (Astra Zeneca) and I caught Covid recently. It was probably Delta as 99% of cases in UK are. I know of quite a few vaccinated friends who've caught it recently too. Mainly AZ I think but one was Pfizer (single jabbed). Anyway, none of us had severe illness although I felt pretty rough for a few days like I had a really bad cold and smell went for a week completely. I was bas…

Thanks for sharing your experience. >"... Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree...." Important to note, vaccines do not protect you, its the immune response they trigger and the level of antibodies that will protect you. What really should be happening should be a mass vaccination program and a mass antibodies level testing pr…

I'm curious to know how much the reaction to the second or subsequent jabs correlates to antibody/immunity level. I had no reaction to the first jab and a 12-hour flu-like reaction to the second jab the next day (both Moderna).

NOT having a similar reaction to a third booster would be concerning, but I wonder how much the reaction actually correlates with protection for shots beyond the first.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Since the deadliest virus mutations kill their hosts, weaker virus mutations can spread (without killing their hosts) more quickly." The problem with the SARS-COV2 virus is that infected individuals are infected before they're symptomatic, let alone dead. Thus there is no evolutionary pressure that would make this virus less lethal, as is the case for viruses that kill their hosts early in the course of infection.

What are some good references on asymptomatic transmission? Early 2020 reports of asymptomatic transmission from South Korea were later retracted. There was a contact tracing study of 10 million people in Wuhan which found no asymptomatic transmission.

Unfortunately I think the media has really mixed up the words "presymptomatic" and "asymptomatic". You're right there is little evidence that people who never develop symptoms can spread COVID. But it seems likely that COVID can be spread up to 48 hours before symptoms develop, which still presents roughly the same problem.

Here is a paper looking at viral shedding over time in COVID patients: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0869-5

I also anecdotally know a few different people who caught COVID from someone who felt fine at the time they interacted, so I'm quite confident it is possible, although I'm not sure I'd make a strong statement about the prevalence.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it appears that it is still unknown how likely breakthrough infections are to result in long Covid. The very limited data that does exist indicates that the likelyhood is rather high (~20%). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/vaccine-long-co...

Isn't long Covid caused by damage from the spike proteins? In that case, repeatedly giving people the vaccine might do damage as well since it gets you to produce those spike proteins right?

The spike proteins allow Covid to enter your cell where its actual RNA coopts the cellular machinery of the cell to reproduce. After enough copies of the virus are assembled the RNA coopted cell is made to kill itself by self-lysis releasing the new viruses.

The spike protein itself is not dangerous.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaths are down because we vaccinated all the old people who were dying in the first waves

Deaths are climbing again in the US and are expected to be above where they were the same time last year within a couple weeks.

It's still lower than the peak of 3300 (7-day average) during the winter season, and that's when we had 250k cases daily. We're almost at 150k daily cases, but with only 1k daily deaths. At least based purely on numbers, the CFR is lower. The CFR is lower because most of the infections are happening in younger people.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really should be happening should be a mass vaccination program Compulsory mass vaccination using the current vaccines poses a serious public health risk [1][2][3]. See my other comments here for more explanation and citations. For these reasons, vaccination strategies should be highly targeted towards vulnerable populations, and should be heavily supplemented by additional therapeutic modalities. > and a mass…

> Compulsory mass vaccination using the current vaccines poses a serious public health risk [1][2][3] None of your references say this or anything remotely implying this. Backing up a provocative claim with a snowblind of irrelevant references is a shameful misinformation tactic and you should stop doing it immediately. Doing it in a public health context is particularly dangerous and frankly disgusting.

My emphasis is on compulsory, but perhaps I should've been more clear. Obviously I've triggered some people here.

Vaccines are powerful tools that help save lives and we should use them. But if they are used indiscriminately they can actually further endanger public health. You might be familiar with antibiotic resistance - vaccines are subject to the same potential for unexpected consequences.

All of the sources I cited support this fact - it is not misinformation. Did you read any of them?

Here are some excerpts for you:

Excerpts from [1]:

> "The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control."

> "Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions. With the emergence of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 with altered transmissibility and immune evasion potential, a critical question is this: how easily can the virus escape neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) targeting the spike RBD?"

> "Our modeling suggests that SARS-CoV-2 mutants with one or two mildly deleterious mutations are expected to exist in high numbers due to neutral genetic variation, and consequently resistance to vaccines or other prophylactics that rely on one or two antibodies for protection can develop quickly -and repeatedly- under positive selection."

> "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape"

> "Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be diversified across molecular targets and therapeutic modalities"

Excerpts from [2]:

> As vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are deployed across populations, it is possible to create a selection pressure for variants that can escape the vaccine-acquired immune response. Over the past few months, several variants have emerged which show a reduced susceptibility to vaccine-acquired immunity, though none appears to escape entirely. These variants largely emerged before vaccination was widespread, thus selection pressure from vaccines is unlikely to have made a significant contribution to their emergence. However, as vaccines become more widespread, the transmission advantage gained by a virus that can evade vaccine-acquired immunity will increase.

> There is no historic precedent for the mass administration of antiviral medication in the community as prophylaxis, apart from the use of anti influenza Neuraminidase Inhibitors, which were used to a limited extent in this way in the early phases of Influenza Pandemic of 2009 in the UK. The safety and efficacy profile must be extremely well established for a mass administration strategy to work and poor compliance will likely rapidly lead to the selection of drug resistant variants, rendering such a strategy short lived.

I could go on, but that fact is your comment is not a charitable or informed response to the statements I made.

[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (April 2021) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#306
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen an evidence that supplements would prevent the majority of severe cases, or the neurological damage done (in even mild cases). Is this something backed up by data?

Is neurological damage in mild cases backed up by data? The only study I saw was based on self reporting and an Internet based IQ test. Also considering perhaps 30% of the world has had covid now (anyone have the exact figure?) that would be an unbelievable amount of brain damage. I’d think we’d be aware of that if one in three people had recent brain damage.

The CDC estimates that 36% of Americans have been infected so far.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're acting in bad faith and you know it. You can't just say "lockdowns/masks/vaccines should have stopped covid, but they didn't", when you know that a lot of people out there refused to mask up, refused to quarantine and refused to get the vaccine. People with your thinking are the reason we're still in this pandemic.

Edit: removed because it wasn't a germane comment.

So you're aware it was noncompliance that reduced the effectiveness of those measures, and you think... those measures shouldn't have been taken at all? I'm not clear on what the alternative was, apart from that.

There's a difference between what's reasonable and being perfect. I think they were absolutely reasonable solutions, since I haven't heard a peep about any better ones available, and even with noncompliance they are helpful.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#308
post #151

Purely anecdotal but I'm double vaccinated (Astra Zeneca) and I caught Covid recently. It was probably Delta as 99% of cases in UK are. I know of quite a few vaccinated friends who've caught it recently too. Mainly AZ I think but one was Pfizer (single jabbed). Anyway, none of us had severe illness although I felt pretty rough for a few days like I had a really bad cold and smell went for a week completely. I was bas…

> The point is that it does seem like this Delta variant breaks through regularly and it does seem (again, purely anecdotal) like it's v infectious. Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. If numbers from IHU Méditerranée are to be believed, the Indian variant is about 6 times less dangerous than the English one. Way more infec…

Assuming that all of Florida has the delta variant, right now 53% of all adult ICU patients is with COVID-19, and the total people in hospitals with COVID is about 79 per 100K. So I don’t understand why anyone thinks this variant is less dangerous. https://www.fha.org/covid-19.html

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#309
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been asking those questions for about 16 months now and hardly anyone of those in charge is willing to even consider an answer. They just botch and bumble their way through from one lockdown to the next. The COVID-19 vaccines are a boon and a vital component for ending this crisis. However, they're not the panacea those in charge made them out to be. Make no mistake, those vaccines, particularly those of the mRN…

Why do 2, 3, 4 when people are already protected? I don't understand the fear the catch covid once your vaccinated, why not make the same measures for the flu for example?

#2 because if the virus gets an update it might make sense to give the immune system an update, too (the same way we do with the flu, by the way).

#3 because it further reduces the risk to get even mildly sick at little to no cost. I'll continue to wear a mask on public transport even after this pandemic is over. I don't need to catch the flu or even the common cold either, if I can avoid it.

#4 because it enormously helps with keeping new infections at a minimum. Hence, further lockdowns neither required nor justifiable anymore.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#310
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because mass vaccination combined with a vaccine that does not necessarily prevent infection and transmission creates selective pressure that is likely to further enhance the fitness of the virus and will lead to variants that escape the immune response in both vaccinated and naturally infected individuals. And yet, the Delta variant evolved in an 100% unvaccinated population - and is quite happily punching through…

Why should already-immune, recovered people be vaccinated?

Vaccination has shown better health outcomes even in already infected persons[1] - getting both is the best protection and there is no rational reason to refuse the vaccine.

1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782139

Post reply on HN