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The mutation that helps Delta spread

nature.com

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Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#491

Post by pacerwpg »

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…

How would an in-hospital treatment of Ivermectin reduce the number of cases? It's only being used when people are already in the hospital with symptoms, which really should have almost zero impact on the spread of disease.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#492

Post by ErikVandeWater »

lazide wrote: post #468
dcolkitt wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No idea where you are getting the idea that the flu predominantly kills the young? It is one of the major causes of death for the old. You generally seem to just be wrong with almost all of your points?

He didn't say it predominantly kills the young. He said the young bare a larger burden with flu than with Covid.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#493

Post by walterbell »

pacerwpg wrote: post #491
walterbell wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How would an in-hospital treatment of Ivermectin reduce the number of cases? It's only being used when people are already in the hospital with symptoms, which really should have almost zero impact on the spread of disease.

Ivermectin proponents recommend early treatment, including outpatient and prophylactic usage with zinc to slow viral progression: https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#494

Post by devnull3 »

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…

I think a better metric now (compared to March 2020) is number of severe cases and hospitalizations and not number of infections.

I wonder if we counted how many people got common cold/flu before the pandemic that number would also be large.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#495

Post by ErikVandeWater »

dragontamer wrote: post #261
mynameishere wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a bit more A bit more until the virus decides to go away? Or a bit more until they invent a non-leaky vaccine? Or a bit more like when the cows come home? Because that's what you are talking about. A bit more forever.

Lets start with "Lets be precautious until hospitals stop triage of care". Maybe we should be precautious until hospitalization levels return to something looking like normal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... > Man shot 6 times waits more than a week for surgery after hospital is overwhelmed by covid --------- When our hospitals are full, we should be cautious. When our hospitals empty…

Blaming Covid specifically for hospital overflow is a fallacy. It's just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Obesity/poor diet require an incredible amount of healthcare resources. Government subsidies of corn play no small factor. Ending subsidies for unhealthy foods is completely within our control unlike infections from new diseases. If we wanted to free up hospital resources we could have done that a year ago with a simple sugar/high fructose syrup tax.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#496

Post by civilized »

criticaltinker wrote: post #453
civilized wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that vaccine escape risk has real implications. I meant to say it doesn't determine whether mass vaccination is prudent. I explained what is missing to make that determination in another comment. Do we agree on that?

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#497

Post by comeondude »

betwixthewires wrote: post #411
Jeema101 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I am mistaken here, but... are you saying that it would need to kill 1/6th of the population every year (instead of 1/600) before you will consider putting a piece of cloth over your face? What's so terrible about wearing a mask?

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,…

This doesn’t focus on the present reality.

If the pandemic becomes endemic then it’s definitely worthwhile to have that dialogue.

However our house is on fire right now in front of us.

I feel like it’s important to be curious about working together to find a solution together RIGHT NOW - instead of worrying about far off scenarios.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#498

Post by criticaltinker »

civilized wrote: post #480
criticaltinker wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "vaccine escape may occur" You're disregarding the nuances and evidence put forth in the cited literature - either intentionally or out of ignorance. A much more fair representation is: "vaccine escape is exceedingly likely to occur under the conditions of mass vaccination combined with a vaccine that does not necessarily prevent infection and transmission, and which induces an immune response highly targeted towar…

Even if vaccine escape eventually occurs, it doesn't follow that mass vaccination itself is a bad policy. You have to weigh the consequences of the escape against the consequences of not mass vaccinating. The consequences of not mass vaccinating are "a lot of people die that wouldn't have with the vaccine", so the consequences of escape need to be pretty dire to outweigh that. Does escape make the virus significantly…

> You have to weigh the consequences of the escape against the consequences of not mass vaccinating

Yes, agreed.

At this point we're talking in circles. It's obvious you believe that the benefits of compulsory mass vaccination outweigh the potential consequences of vaccine induced immune escape, even though you admit that "it's unclear" whether compulsory mass vaccination will make the virus even more lethal and potentially lead to even more suffering and death.

I won't continue on with the debate because no further evidence is being provided, and frankly we're in agreement that the calculus is intractable right now, and only in disagreement on whether it's acceptable to call compulsory mass vaccination a public health risk, so it's just semantics at this point.

> one critical question would be whether the vaccine somehow hinders the immune system from developing a more complex and robust response to the virus

Here is some literature that provides preliminary answers [1][2]. The summary is that natural infection induces an immune response which includes nucleocapsid protein antibodies, whereas vaccination using the current mRNA formulations does not. Compared to natural infection, vaccination induces an immune response that is more highly targeted toward the spike protein RBD. In terms of individual health outcomes, neither of these papers address whether natural infection offers better or worse immune protection compared to vaccination.

[1] Distinct SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Responses Elicited by Natural Infection and mRNA Vaccination https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.440089v4

[2] Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from SARS-CoV-2 infection https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#499

Post by civilized »

criticaltinker wrote: post #498
civilized wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if vaccine escape eventually occurs, it doesn't follow that mass vaccination itself is a bad policy. You have to weigh the consequences of the escape against the consequences of not mass vaccinating. The consequences of not mass vaccinating are "a lot of people die that wouldn't have with the vaccine", so the consequences of escape need to be pretty dire to outweigh that. Does escape make the virus significantly…

> You have to weigh the consequences of the escape against the consequences of not mass vaccinating Yes, agreed. At this point we're talking in circles. It's obvious you believe that the benefits of compulsory mass vaccination outweigh the potential consequences of vaccine induced immune escape, even though you admit that "it's unclear" whether compulsory mass vaccination will make the virus even more lethal and pote…

Not talking in circles I think - I'm happy with where we landed. Sorry I started off harsh. You sounded too close to an antivaxxer trying to pass your opinions off as authoritative, and semantics really do matter there. I'm glad to see your ideas are much more nuanced and I think we largely agree at this point. To get any clearer we probably need input from proper vaccinologists. And hopefully they are informing policy, although that's no guarantee in this bungled response we've had.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#500

Post by natmaka »

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.…

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
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