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The mutation that helps Delta spread

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Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#351

Post by walterbell »

vkou wrote: post #347
walterbell wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent UK data shows 137 confirmed cases of reinfection out of 5.2 million first-positive PCR tests, which works out to 0.003%, see the chart on page 18, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

No, it's not 137 confirmed re-infections. It's 35,124 re-infections, 137 of which were analyzed in a particular way . Your understanding of the situation differs by two and a half orders of magnitude from reality. And that number has nowhere to go but up, as antibody levels in survivors drop.

Where "in a particular way" is highly accurate genomic sequencing rather than a PCR test with a long list of known problems, such that the CDC is discontinuing usage at the end of 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert...

i.e., the questionable number is orders of magnitude larger than the reliable number.

> as antibody levels in survivors drop

Recovered survivors have multiple mechanisms of defense, including antibodies against components of SARS-CoV-2 (not just spike protein) and T-cells, which have been proven effective against SARS1 after 17 years. They also have both nasal/mucous and blood/serum antibodies, unlike the vaccinated which have primarily blood/serum antibodies against one spike protein variant for symptom reduction.

Survivors don't need boosters. Those who take non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines may need boosters.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#352

Post by quarterdime »

walterbell wrote: post #182
quarterdime wrote: post #116

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.

I believe that "asymptomatic" refers to an infected individual who will never get symptoms. "Presymptomatic" means the individual has no symptoms, but will develop them later.

As far as presymptomatic transmission, this is a good case study from Germany: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/4/20-4576_article. A 59 case cluster in which little/no asymptomatic transmission was observed, but 75% of transmission was presymptomatic.

Another interesting paper, also out of Germany covering 400k individuals, 25k infections: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6551/eabi5273. I can't write a summary better than the one in the paper: The role that individuals with asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 have in transmission of the virus is not well understood. Jones et al. investigated viral load in patients, comparing those showing few, if any, symptoms with hospitalized cases. Approximately 400,000 individuals, mostly from Berlin, were tested from February 2020 to March 2021 and about 6% tested positive. Of the 25,381 positive subjects, about 8% showed very high viral loads. People became infectious within 2 days of infection, and in hospitalized individuals, about 4 days elapsed from the start of virus shedding to the time of peak viral load, which occurred 1 to 3 days before the onset of symptoms. Overall, viral load was highly variable, but was about 10-fold higher in persons infected with the B.1.1.7 variant. Children had slightly lower viral loads than adults, although this difference may not be clinically significant.

The second paper is a bit dense, but there is a great discussion at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4AR7qPxz_Q, with discussion of this paper beginning maybe 47:00. 1:14:08 beings a discussion about how a large number of cases might be caused by a small number of individuals. Interestingly, these individuals are not necessarily the same as those who go on to be seriously ill, hospitalized, or die.

In practice, the difference between presymptomatic and asymptomatic makes little difference. The key is that we have ample evidence that an infected person can infect others while they do not have symptoms.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#353

Post by nradov »

walterbell wrote: post #316
munk-a wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is still very early in vaccine trials. There are anecdotal reports of an increase in non-Covid health problems (e.g. reactivation of dormant infections that had previously been suppressed by the immune system) in those who had already recovered from Covid, then got vaccinated. That's separate from the tens of thousands of reports in VAERS and non-public (HMO) adverse event reporting systems for all Covid-vaccinate…

VAERS suffers from some serious data quality problems. It isn't a representative random sample. No one really validates reports to determine if adverse events were actually caused by vaccination. I suspect that some anti-vaxxers just straight up submit false reports to push their political viewpoint. At most VAERS provides some clues about where to focus real research.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#354

Post by dcolkitt »

jmfldn wrote: 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…

There’s a question of preferences that too often gets buried in this debate. If Covid becomes endemic at around its current severity, what level of pandemic restrictions are you willing to accept forever?

For me personally, Covid would have to be at least 100 times worse before I’d support masking forever. But I get the sense that some people barely see any downside to it. I think these cross-views drive so much if the underlying debate. But because we’re not talking about the hard long-term questions we’re getting bogged down in largely short term spats about case spikes, vaccine boosters, etc.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#355

Post by tcbawo »

mrfusion wrote: post #181
tcbawo wrote: 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.

I'm neither a researcher or doctor, but I've seen numerous articles that describe this. Anecdotally, I've had multiple people (acquaintances and family) suffer from neurological effects.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32696341/ https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Current-Research/Coronavirus-and-N...

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#356

Post by ssklash »

xienze wrote: post #276
ssklash wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the way other diseases were eradicated required the cooperation of everyone on earth? Or at least in most countries. The reason we don't get polio in virtually any country on earth is because of global cooperation in the face of a disease with a known mitigation. Barely 500 known cases world-wide in 2019. Thanks to global cooperation. Too bad propaganda and social media probably ruined our chances of…

> The reason we don't get polio in virtually any country on earth is because of global cooperation in the face of a disease with a known mitigation. The polio vaccine being a sterilizing one is certainly a _major_ reason for its success. The Covid vaccine, by contrast, does not confer sterilizing immunity. Polio also spreads through contaminated food and water, not the exhaled breath of the infected. So other than th…

I'd say another major reason for the polio vaccine's success is the whole world took it. Substitute mumps, measles, rubella, smallpox, whatever you'd like. Anyway you totally missed the point about global cooperation. We know masks, social distancing, and vaccination with enough cooperation could end the pandemic, but no, people just won't cooperate.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#357

Post by walterbell »

nradov wrote: post #353
walterbell wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still very early in vaccine trials. There are anecdotal reports of an increase in non-Covid health problems (e.g. reactivation of dormant infections that had previously been suppressed by the immune system) in those who had already recovered from Covid, then got vaccinated. That's separate from the tens of thousands of reports in VAERS and non-public (HMO) adverse event reporting systems for all Covid-vaccinate…

VAERS suffers from some serious data quality problems. It isn't a representative random sample. No one really validates reports to determine if adverse events were actually caused by vaccination. I suspect that some anti-vaxxers just straight up submit false reports to push their political viewpoint. At most VAERS provides some clues about where to focus real research.

Yes, hence the reference to private HMO databases. CDC VSD (Vaccine Safety Datalink) is not public, sometimes we get data snapshots when CDC is investigating specific adverse events, like blood clots, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27464528. There are people with access to both VAERS and VSD for trend signals, including doctors with private data from seeing patients.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#358

Post by Florin_Andrei »

walterbell wrote: post #131
aantix wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take Vitamin D/C/Zinc/Niacin and build up natural immunity?

There's a social-acceptability phenomenon where people say one thing (e.g. in surveys) and do another (e.g. what they buy). Relatively early in 2020, some grocery and pharmacy shelves were completely emptied of Vit C/D/Zinc/Quercetin. When they were restocked, they would sell out again, even with per-customer quotas. This took place even with a complete news blackout on early treatments. As with HCQ/Ivermectin, we ha…

> there are billions of dollars of economic incentives for suppression of early treatment, because vaccines are still under EUA that could be questioned by the availability of therapeutics with decades of safety data

Conspiracy theory. Rather old and naive, I should add.

Zero Hedge is a cesspool of pseudo-science when it comes to COVID. The best data source can be twisted into complete nonsense when folks have political agendas - so namedropping JHU in that context is just empty rhetoric.

Well, maybe it's not "empty" rhetoric, since clearly some naive folks are persuaded by it.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#359

Post by godmode2019 »

rolph wrote: post #334
code_duck wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. A longer asymptomatic incubation period is also an evolutionary advantage.

when reproduction[X] occurs before a selective factor[y] is in play, the selective factor has no first order influence on reproductive success. the theory of inverse relationship between severity of symptoms and transmissibility, is based on the idea that sick individuals spend more time laying in convolesence than interacting with other individuals. this mechanism goes out the window when the infection is transmissi…

Its also based on what is not getting used to increase fitness gets repurposed.

Causing illness in the host after it has finished spreading has no evolutionary advantage.

So those traits are less likely to make it to the next epoch.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#360

Post by nicoburns »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #208
loosescrews wrote: post #192

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...

Long Covid has the same symptoms as stress, anxiety and depression, which are to be expected after contracting a pandemic level virus and being forced to isolate. Is there any proof yet that it is any more than that?

I've had heart problems to the point that I can't do any exercise more vigorous than walking without getting heart pain severe enough to make me stop immediately, and often suffering from extreme fatigue in the days afterwards. I was previously a reasonably fit 28 year old who regularly danced, occasionally went to the gym etc.

It's nothing like depression. The symptoms are very much physical.

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