Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 432 posts

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#261

Post by coolso »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #79
flunhat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can barely say the results out loud lest you get silenced by the angry mob Would you chill out? People are disagreeing with you & presenting evidence, not burning you at stake. When did everyone get so damn fragile??

I find that the sort of people who call others snowflakes end up being the biggest snowflakes of all.

I find that the worst counter to being called a snowflake, is calling others a snowflake in return because they simply called you out on trying to silence opinions that aren't your own.

Here we see the GP disappointed that every time he and others bring up salient points, they are silenced by an angry mob. It's a real stretch to call him the snowflake in this situation. Nobody calls people a snowflake for disagreeing, it's the way that traditional snowflakes disagree that people have a problem with.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#262

Post by etiam »

johnchristopher wrote: post #235

> We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual (see my P.S. note at the end of the post). How does that work ? Virus mutate inside the host until either death or the immune system stops it ? Why is the absence of selective pressure producing a vir…

I'm not an expert in this, but having said that:

The selective pressure would typically not be completely absent, but hampered enough that the game can stay on much longer than usual. Conditions like that could be imagined to set up continued high copy numbers of virus, alongside a fierce internal competition for infection. The clone will get opportunity to diversify much more due to the long infection, so there is more of a chance for novel alleles to arise and compete against their ancestral form.

And a weakened immune system gives more leeway for incremental improvement of marginal advantages. Somewhat allegorically, a new slight advantage escaping antibodies is worth nothing in context if every extra virion who escapes falls to phagocytes and cytotoxic T-cells. But if the other components are weakened, the selection pressure is unmasked. (At least it seems to me that should be the case in theory, I'm not sure if the effect is strong enough to be very important in practice in this context).

> We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual (see my P.S. note at the end of the post).

This really stood out to catch my attention and imagination too.

With "immunocompromised" and Sub-Saharan Africa juxtaposed, it's hard not to think HIV. If (when, really) they co-infect, SARS-CoV-2 would be working in the context of HIV reverse transcriptase, and that could potentially mean going from RNA to DNA (possibly with incorporation into host DNA) and then back again by route of regular transcription. No big stretch if that would mess with copying fidelity and introduce lots of new opportunities to pick up new sequences and corresponding abilities.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#263

Post by ed_balls »

johnchristopher wrote: post #235

> We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual (see my P.S. note at the end of the post). How does that work ? Virus mutate inside the host until either death or the immune system stops it ? Why is the absence of selective pressure producing a vir…

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#264

Post by biophysboy »

splittingTimes wrote: post #13

For a fully waxed person, Would it make sense to try to get infected by Delta to build more immunity to fight off that omicron thing? With so many significant variations on the spike protein the vaccines will be no help..

It is true that the variant has major escape mutations on the relevant epitopes (the antibody target).

But this does not mean that it will completely escape the polyclonal antibodies created by illness/vaccine. And also keep in mind that there are T-cells, which are more robust to virus mutation.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#265

Post by gladinovax »

rel2thr wrote: post #74

> Because the change is small, an updated vaccine doesn’t need Phase III trials and/or regularity approval. So, this whole process should take a max of 6 weeks. This appears to be incorrect, Moderna says it needs 60 days to just get into trials ( https://twitter.com/megtirrell/status/1464225637590310938 ) . The FDA has not said what the approval process will look like, but its safe to say it will be non-zero

Doesn't need phase 3 trials? That's gonna be great! How soon will other people be able to get it?

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#266

Post by cthalupa »

timr wrote: post #203
vishho wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cannot do the science, because such a randomized test would be deeply unethical. Compare to having pregnant women smoke cigarettes to study effect on the fetus. You do this only afterwards with observational data. Next to politization there is also public health, which is more of a management science than an emperical science. And economic concerns. From all the data worldwide, you only reduce risk of hospitalizat…

> We cannot do the science, because such a randomized test would be deeply unethical. Thank you for perfectly illustrating the problem. I was actually sort of worried that people wouldn't take me seriously when I said that science has become so political that we actually can't do any . It sounds conspiratorial, doesn't it? But, alas: 1) I post results of RCTs showing that masks do little, if anything. 2) Someone repl…

It isn't a political issue to not do studies that require doing things that actively and intentionally put people at things we know are highly likely to put them at risk of physical harm. The world decided this was unethical long before the current political climate.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#267

Post by jwlake »

simondotau wrote: post #243
enw wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially you're also missing the forest from the trees: it may be an order of magnitude higher, but in relation to the population size, the number of deaths is minuscule regardless.

Well then I have to ask: what hypothetical rate of death could exceed your definition of minuscule? How many per capita deaths do we need to reach before you will agree that societal intervention is warranted? A number would be appreciated.

The simple answer is public policy always lags the public therefor is always a bad idea to implement NPIs. Public policy should be concentrating on increasing hospital capacity, therapeutic/prophylactic distribution. Presumably never on "lockdowns" or travel bans or masks. People will lock themselves down if it's bad enough, and more importantly at finer granularity and with more equity.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#268

Post by collaborative »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #152
nradov wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so what are you suggesting? Everyone wear N95 masks all the time forever?

It's tricky. - fwiw, I personally plan to wear n95 mask outside of home in enclosed public spaces for the foreseeable future, and for things like shopping etc (where I'm exposed to strangers) basically indefinitely / as long as social norms and laws will allow. - I would like for strangers around me to wear masks. There's too much uncertainty and I don't know how to quantify and otherwise address risk from stranger e…

You actually want to be exposed to the virus (after vaccination) during the summer and if possible as often as possible after a successful exposure. It's the only way forward. You can't lock it out forever, and you need to play catch up with it as it evolves or by the time you get it your immune system won't know what to do with it

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#269

Post by refurb »

johnchristopher wrote: post #234
refurb wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not need to show it’s safe? A new mRNA vaccine would be introducing different mRNA, which produces new antigen proteins and elicits a different immune response.

If it elicited the same immune response it wouldn't be much of a use though, right ? Anyway, how do they know the usual but new seasonal flu vaccine is safe ? Can't the same framework apply ?

They run clinical trials on them to make sure they are safe and effective.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectivenessqa.htm

Manufacturers guess which flu strain will predominate and start working 9-12 months early to capture the data for approval.

There is no way a new Covid mRNA vaccine will be approved with safety and efficacy data from a clinical trial. That will be take months to complete.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#270

Post by dragontamer »

btmiller wrote: post #211
dragontamer wrote: post #10

Look, I'm about as pro-vaccine, pro-lockdown, pro-mask as they come. But the hyperbolic reporting on this variant is not helpful. News articles in mainstream press are already wrong: WHO has named this Omicron (while many publications came out with Nu). This is a virus that takes weeks to months before a variant becomes dominant. You can afford to wait a day or two to get information correct before publishing. Edit:…

Just as a reminder, HN isn’t a place where it’s acceptable to appeal to downvoters as a tactic for increasing the legitimacy of your comment.

My comment hit -3 and no one wrote a critical counterpoint yet.

I took a guess at why it was downvotes. Nothing more.

Post reply on HN