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Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

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Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#31

Post by echelon »

spuz wrote: post #14
zamfi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every article that leads with this kind of stat is guilty of lying by omission. The typical immune response produces 10,000-100,000 times more antibodies than “necessary” to fight an infection. If delta needs 8x more antibodies, then, well, our immune response is only overkill by a factor of 1,250-12,500. Perhaps that’s enough for some of the virus to escape. But it’s still plenty to prevent severe illness! Of course…

That's really interesting, thanks.

The problem is that the immune system is an incredibly complex and dynamical system that almost nobody with only a general biology understanding is equipped to understand. It's even worse if you have no familiarity with biology.

Your general bio classes in college gloss over immunology to a point that it's practically a misshapen lie. (Not unlike undergraduate general chemistry.)

You have to read and study a lot more to understand and describe the behavior of the system such as the parent poster did. And that's just one small detail in an elaborate series of interacting mechanisms.

It's so weird to see the world impacted by something people are ill equipped to understand. And it makes you wonder about all the other crises we deal with where you have absolutely zero bearing for understanding.

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#32

Post by [deleted] »

geofft wrote: post #20
TheBlight wrote: post #2

I was told this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

By whom? It's a pandemic, it affects everyone. It's right there in the name. I'm fully vaccinated, and I spent half an hour at a bank yesterday (wearing an N95) and I'm voluntarily quarantining for two weeks. It's a deadly disease. It doesn't care about your PR slogans or your political alignment. It does care about transmission, which is why avoiding unnecessary trips, wearing real ventilators (not cloth masks, Fauc…

[deleted]

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#33

Post by qzw »

criticaltinker wrote: post #24
listless wrote: post #17

> “The team found that the Delta variant virus was 5.7-fold less sensitive to the sera from previously-infected individuals, and as much as eight-fold less sensitive to vaccine sera” I read this as “natural immunity is better”. Unless I’m reading that wrong, why don’t we hear more about this? I’m vaccinated AND got a breakthrough infection and I’m worried that my immunity is weaker than that of my wife who was unvacc…

Preliminary data from Israel suggests that immunity acquired through natural infection may be more robust to variants like delta, compared to vaccine induced immunity. See this preprint and discussion from a couple weeks ago [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28307224

That's kind of beside the point. With natural infection, the risk of severe illness is also much higher. So for most people trying to get "better" immunity by natural infection is not a good tradeoff. It's kind of like saying that since it's extremely rare to get bitten by a shark twice, you should try to get a shark to bite you once in order to acquire "immunity" to sharks.

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#34

Post by cartoonworld »

listless wrote: post #17

> “The team found that the Delta variant virus was 5.7-fold less sensitive to the sera from previously-infected individuals, and as much as eight-fold less sensitive to vaccine sera” I read this as “natural immunity is better”. Unless I’m reading that wrong, why don’t we hear more about this? I’m vaccinated AND got a breakthrough infection and I’m worried that my immunity is weaker than that of my wife who was unvacc…

From what I have learned over the past months wrt variants and vaccine efficacy, the delta variant has a mutated spike protein which allows it to more easily and I believe more quickly bind to host cells and begin inserting its genetic information.

I understand that the spike protein is the most saturated target of the known immunological study, vaccines have been mainly targeting this protein. Normal immunity works on the current variant of infection and will react to these mutations.

As an aside, the protein is very interesting, check out this[0] linked animation of the viral insertion, note the dramatic conformal changes.

The mutations in particular variants might achieve a little bit of infection speed, and a little immunological camouflage, both seem to support allowing faster replication.

I don't know because I am not a doctor or virologist, but I would conjecture that the vaccine still prepares our immune responses to target this kind of protein, so it can somewhat more easily learn the new signature and produce antibodies.

[0] length: 01:54 title: Animation of SARS-CoV-2 entry into human host-cell - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuc9D4LVJdg

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#35

Post by achenatx »

clipradiowallet wrote: post #28
achenatx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb people are going to want to go to covid parties to get infected naturally because it is better immunity.. Public health messages need to be kept simple. Natural immunity should be better because you are exposed to all the same proteins in the vaccine plus more and also possibly for a longer period of time and at a higher quantity. Now that you had delta, you should be immune to delta and partially immune to what…

> Dumb people are going to want to go to covid parties When I was a child, parents would inform other parents when a child had chickenpox; so they could have a sleepover. That was normal practice in the portion of the USA I grew up in. As a result, nearly everyone my age has natural immunity to chickenpox. I share that anecdote to point out that the idea of an "infection party" is a really old idea that was practiced…

chickenpox has a death rate of .001%

Covid has a death rate of .5% (higher for older people, lower for younger)

flu has a death rate of .1% and you dont see people having flu parties..

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#36

Post by nostromo »

listless wrote: post #17

> “The team found that the Delta variant virus was 5.7-fold less sensitive to the sera from previously-infected individuals, and as much as eight-fold less sensitive to vaccine sera” I read this as “natural immunity is better”. Unless I’m reading that wrong, why don’t we hear more about this? I’m vaccinated AND got a breakthrough infection and I’m worried that my immunity is weaker than that of my wife who was unvacc…

Natural immunity is 13 times stronger than what we get from the vaccines, according to data from Israel.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

We probably didn’t even need to waste vaccines on people who had already recovered.

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#37

Post by glugc »

clipradiowallet wrote: post #28
achenatx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb people are going to want to go to covid parties to get infected naturally because it is better immunity.. Public health messages need to be kept simple. Natural immunity should be better because you are exposed to all the same proteins in the vaccine plus more and also possibly for a longer period of time and at a higher quantity. Now that you had delta, you should be immune to delta and partially immune to what…

> Dumb people are going to want to go to covid parties When I was a child, parents would inform other parents when a child had chickenpox; so they could have a sleepover. That was normal practice in the portion of the USA I grew up in. As a result, nearly everyone my age has natural immunity to chickenpox. I share that anecdote to point out that the idea of an "infection party" is a really old idea that was practiced…

Now in 2021 we are going to force kids to interact with their peers with a facemask on to make sure they never get to build a competent immune system.

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#38

Post by bredren »

gfodor wrote: post #8
arbuge wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that means is that the unvaccinated are much more likely to become seriously ill if infected: https://www.axios.com/unvaccinated-hospitalized-covid-60dc90... It does not mean that the vaccinated cannot spread disease, however.

There is presently to my understanding a lot of claims of severity reduction, but I would like to see evidence and an explanation for it. My working model is that a consistent alternative explanation is the vaccine reduces infection risk dramatically but once infected severity can be the same.

I have seen this "alternative explanation" or variation on it used as an equivocation to justify the choice to go without being vaccinated.

I recently saw a social media post of a person in an ICU with Covid expressing regret about not getting vaccinated, and urging others to get vaccinated. One of their "friends" commented in response to the post with parent's "alternative explanation."

Would someone please share a link to source data showing that infection severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated is not similar?

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#39

Post by _Microft »

geofft wrote: post #20
TheBlight wrote: post #2

I was told this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

By whom? It's a pandemic, it affects everyone. It's right there in the name. I'm fully vaccinated, and I spent half an hour at a bank yesterday (wearing an N95) and I'm voluntarily quarantining for two weeks. It's a deadly disease. It doesn't care about your PR slogans or your political alignment. It does care about transmission, which is why avoiding unnecessary trips, wearing real ventilators (not cloth masks, Fauc…

It is not the wearer that cloth masks offer protection to but to their environment. That's mostly achieved by slowing and diffusing the exhaled air and making it less likely that the infectious droplets reach others in the first place. I wouldn't want to have to wear one now that it's almost exclusively the Delta variant making the rounds but they were an acceptable measure against the wild variety/Alpha.

Look for a study from Jena, a town in Germany, that issued a mask mandate weeks before other regions if you are curious.

Re: Spread of Delta variant driven by both immune escape and increased infectivity

#40

Post by eightysixfour »

listless wrote: post #17

> “The team found that the Delta variant virus was 5.7-fold less sensitive to the sera from previously-infected individuals, and as much as eight-fold less sensitive to vaccine sera” I read this as “natural immunity is better”. Unless I’m reading that wrong, why don’t we hear more about this? I’m vaccinated AND got a breakthrough infection and I’m worried that my immunity is weaker than that of my wife who was unvacc…

> I’m worried that my immunity is weaker

It is my understanding the effect is additive. The vaccine shows your immune system a small but important part of the virus so your immune system knows to respond to those particular proteins in the future. A natural infection exposes you to more proteins, so your body also recognizes those as dangerous.

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