The mutation that helps Delta spread • Hacker News Board

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#451

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

hncurious wrote: post #217

rich_sasha wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just asking: would they also be effective in a slightly clueless general public? Eg they only work when they are in your face, fitted, etc. It could be that cost/actual benefit looks worse when you factor poor usage.

That's actually what Dr Fauci initially talked about with regard to the general public. With how masks are worn and used in practice, he was probably right. Fauci: There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that…

Fauci later admitted to essentially lying to the public so there wasn't a shortage of masks for healthcare workers.

https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

> "Well, the reason for [not telling people to wear masks in March, 2020] is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

Laudable as his intentions may be, and while I doubt he makes it a habit, he lied.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#452

Post by betwixthewires » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

volfied wrote: post #146

johnbaker92 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to "science": - Lockdowns should have stopped covid. - Masks should have stopped covid. - Vaccines should have stopped covid. - "Health" passports and those ridiculous mandates should have stopped covid. The fact is, we're two years down the road and we're still talking about this virus - so "true" science (that advocated by governments / media I imagine?) is obviously not working. Time to take a step back…

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.

I said this above, but if your solution requires every living person to obey you it is not a serious suggestion for a solution. Everyone in the world was never going to mask up and lock themselves away, this was actually an argument made by people as part of why these measures wouldn't work. Is the current state of things proof they were right? I'm surprised to see this excuse for failure of these measures so often touted in a forum largely comprised of computer scientists.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#453

Post by criticaltinker » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

civilized wrote: post #391

breck wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think it is a serious public health risk, at a certain probability, and you've provided no sources or math to explain what the probability is. Can you enlighten us as to what the probability of vaccine escape is? Is the risk of vaccine escape 50%? 5%? .5%? .00005%? I have no idea what the OOM of possibilities is (I am attempting to model it). I appreciate all literature that explores that. Clearly we've…

To repeat what I've said several times now (how can I be more clear?), the risk of vaccine escape does not imply a particular public health policy. There is no procedure that tells us what policy we should choose based on vaccine escape risk, because it isn't the only consideration. It is irresponsible to make authoritative pronouncements on a complex public health policy issue when you're completely fixated on one p…

> the risk of vaccine escape does not imply a particular public health policy

It does have major ramifications for public health policy - you're disagreeing with many experts in the field when you make these claims.

> There is no procedure that tells us what policy we should choose based on vaccine escape risk, because it isn't the only consideration

Of course it isn't the only consideration - no one claimed that it was. This is a straw man.

> It is irresponsible to make authoritative pronouncements on a complex public health policy issue when you're completely fixated on one particular risk.

We are in agreement on this in general, and I admit my comment could have been worded less strongly.

But again, these ideas are being espoused by experts publishing peer-reviewed literature. They are not "fixated on one particular risk", and if you take the time to read the cited literature you'll find rich discussion of many subtle nuances and tradeoffs. That is as authoritative as it gets. There is nothing irresponsible about sharing the knowledge and opinions put forth by world class researchers.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#454

Post by tiahura » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

solarengineer wrote: post #394

tiahura wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“what level of pandemic restrictions are you willing to accept forever?” That’s the question our leaders seem to be terrified to answer. How long until Fauci admits that its not just going to go away?

Non-American here from Singapore. There’s “not going away” and then there’s “are enough vaccinated? Are the vulnerable vaccinated? Do we have hospital bed and nurse +doctor capacity?” Here in Singapore, we’re ensuring that those above 60 get vaccinated where feasible before we fully open up. Meanwhile, with an increasing percentage of the population getting vaccinated, there are gradual lifting of controls. The Minis…

I think you’re probably right that lockdown measures should track, inter alia, projected hospital utilization. However, the message we’re still receiving is that the lockdown remains necessary because if we can just maintain it a bit longer, COVID will go away. It seems a bit disingenuous, sorta like “free beer…tomorrow.”

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#455

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

nonbirithm wrote: post #6

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?

It's gotten ~2x more contagious and slightly more virulent in the past 18 months. If training ML models taught me anything, in the near term, it will continue in the same direction, but the gains will be much smaller.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#456

Post by mynegation » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #446

mynegation wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it may all look like small potatoes, but this is HN and you are two orders of magnitude off. 0.01% is pretty close to annual death rate from flu in pre-COVID years [1] so the situation that "one hundred times worse than the current situation" will make it 100 hundred times worse (i.e. significantly worse) than seasonal influenza. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Okay, fair enough. But a major difference is that flu deaths are much more heavily burdened on the the young, whereas Covid is on the very elderly. The death of a 6 month old from flu results in approximately 20 times more QALY loss than an 85 year old. Let me approach it from another angle. Pre-vaccine, it appears that Covid roughly doubled everyone's all-cause mortality.[1] Like it killed 30 year olds at a much low…

I seriously hope it is true, i.e. COVID-19 with vaccination settles into roughly flu territory. With all-cause mortality percentages - it is important to remember that doubling all cause mortality happened during the introduction of public health measures. Has it not happened it would be much worse.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#457

Post by criticaltinker » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

civilized wrote: post #365

afarviral wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a stretch but the linked studies are worth a read anyway. I've only (cursorily) read [1] but it suggests combining different approaches for targeting immune response rather than the same approach across the populous. The risk would be assuming high levels of protection given how likely the virus is of escaping a single target through evolution. I guess that does pose a risk if people treat the current vacc…

The cited papers are definitely legitimate and interesting, even though they do not support the point the commenter wished to make. It's too bad that HN flagging means the OC can't be seen at all. Most content which deserves harsh criticism does not necessarily deserve full censorship, which can easily backfire. We do need diversified defenses, but we shouldn't forget that our natural immunity is ultimately the line…

> even though they do not support the point the commenter wished to make

They do support the general point - if you think otherwise, please articulate how they do not.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#458

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#459

Post by runako » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:50 AM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #345

doubleunplussed wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viruses are subject to selection, mutation, and heredity. These are the three necessary ingredients for Darwinian evolution. Whether they're defined as "life" or not isn't really relevant. (Personally, I have a pet definition of "life" that just equates it to being subject to Darwinian evolution. Viruses not being defined as life never sat well with me) Vaccines can't do their thing in a petri dish, they need an immu…

I just keep seeing repeats of logic like this (this example from this random article: https://www.unitypoint.org/article.aspx?id=db428f77-6e61-497... ) "The creation of a vaccine for any new virus could also cause additional mutations. “Let’s explain this concept a little further. Any virus will keep trying to change, so it can continue to spread. With all vaccines, the more quickly people get vaccinated the better.…

> Any virus will keep trying to change

First, the "virus" in this sentence means "all the trillions of individual virions currently in our environment, including the trillions currently in living cells. This does not mean that individual virions are changing in response to any stimulus or lack thereof. What they are saying is that as those trillions beget many trillions more, there will be many random mutations. Most of those mutations will result in failure. Some will end up as successful as their antecedent. A tiny few will end up with mutations that make them more successful in the current environment. So the mutations happen regardless of anything we do or don't do.

But as we take more countermeasures, it becomes harder for the baseline virions to be successful (because the vaccines work, distancing works, etc.). Any mutations that are only as successful as baseline are going to have trouble spreading. So by default what we will see is more of the mutations that result in things like easier transmission. Because they are better suited to the current environment where people are taking countermeasures. And because baseline is not as successful, the proportion of the new variants will increase over time.

Putting this together, if there's no selection pressure, mutations don't confer any advantage and they will tend to disappear from the population. So through that lens, the new variants wouldn't necessarily have gained a foothold if people weren't using countermeasures. That's not specifically the vaccines, though. Delta is apparently more transmissible generally, and that could also be a response (via random mutation) to social distancing & masking measures.

So the vaccine didn't cause the mutation, but the presence of the vaccine and other human countermeasures shaped the evolution of the vaccine.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#460

Post by betwixthewires » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #438

betwixthewires wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misdirecting and missing the point entirely. While I'm not quite anti mask like the parent comment, it is an important question to consider, it is always a trade off. What severity warrant what measures? If there's still covid like now in 10 years, will we all have to wear masks at work until we retire? Is this feasible? If not, then when do we stop? Will the people advocating it ever tell us to stop? If not,…

> will we all have to wear masks at work until we retire It's really funny to watch all the push back against masks considering how many uncomfortable things people put on themselves every single day, and usually just because someone told them it's cool thing to do. High heels, bras, neckties, etc. and not to forget things that we do to our bodies like implants and piercings and tattoos - most of that is way less use…

The difference is that those are worn by choice, and in very specific social situations. A more comparable thing would be to shoes, or shirts, since we are talking about everyone wearing them. It's not just a matter of making it cool, hats are cool and not everyone wears a hat. Facial expression is a very important part of human interaction and I think that will always outweigh any amount of cool that can be pumped into masks.