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Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

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Re: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

#331

Post by gandutraveler »

bedhead wrote: post #105
isodev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine there was a fire near where you live, constantly spreading and endangering lives in your community. Would you say people can just "learn to live it"?

Can you point to a single policy that has demonstrated (in an intellectually honest way) ANY efficacy in slowing covid? One?? Vax passports, cloth masks, N95 masks, face shields, closing schools, cohorts, WFH, clean/dirty pen jars (my fave), plexiglass, 6 feet, travel bans... The grim reality is that there hasn't been a single policy that's been shown to have made any difference at all. NONE. There's literally nothin…

In Hawaii, there was a direct correlation to covid cases and travel bans i.e. allowing only covid -ve tested travelers.

State has also seen no increase in covid cases once they allowed fully vaccinated travelers. So yeah lockdown works. And so would masks at some level.

Re: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

#333

Post by naasking »

lamontcg wrote: post #202
naasking wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> individuals who were both previously infected and vaccinated were still able to neutralize the mutant virus. Mainly because of the infection, not the vaccination. Infection trains your immune response to detect multiple factors of the virus, the mRNA vaccines are only for the spike protein which has considerable mutations in later variants like this one. Arguably, traditional dead-virus vaccines might provide bette…

Somatic Hypermutation works on vaccine antigens as well, and diversifies B-cells so that the B-cells will recognize many spike mutations. Anyone who has been vaccinated or recovered probably has some B-cells which match this spike, even if they're not amplified and expressed into circulating neutralizing antibodies. T-cells on the other hand don't diversify as much but they recognize primarily the host MHC section of…

> You're pushing a narrative that spike-only vaccines are worse in the face of mutation, and there's just no evidence of that

"Pushing a narrative" is a pretty uncharitable interpretation of a short off-hand comment.

There actually is some evidence that the infected have a stronger immune protection to exposure than the vaccinated, and there are mechanistic reasons this would make sense, so I wouldn't go so far as there's no evidence for it. We'll just have to wait and see.

Re: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

#334

Post by _dain_ »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #324
_dain_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

literally yes. in the words of my corrupt and buffoonish prime minister: let the bodies pile high. the wisest thing he ever said, even though he won't admit to it. (and really the piles won't be that high. they'll be of low-to-medium height, consisting mostly of the old and fat.)

Ah mostly the old and fat! That's ok then. People dying is all fine and good until it happens to you or someone you care about.

yes

Re: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

#335

Post by sharken »

gandutraveler wrote: post #330
WithinReason wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a 0% mortality strain displacing delta would be an extremely good outcome. One way pandemics stop is the virus mutating to harmlessness.

That is exactly what I thought of too. So far the symptoms appear to be very mild and this could be a good way to scale immunity

The media is extremely focused on the number of infected and how infectious a new variant is.

Somehow the low number of new hospitalizations is not newsworthy.

Here in Denmark the hospitalizations have been steady at around 45% of the numbers we had when there was no vaccine.

It's also 45% of the numbers we had in 2017/2018 with the flu back then. But that fact is not being used much to put things into perspective.

Re: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

#336

Post by sharken »

nostromo wrote: post #121
malepoon wrote: post #93

Twitter thread from a vaccine developer: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1464222680731820043.html A lot of speculation still, but it's not all bad so far.

This image really puts it in context: https://images.app.goo.gl/13amCWF8aJ8q2eZAA The red portion of the graph on the far right is the new variant.

To further put things into perspective, here the daily number of infections have gone from a few hundred up to 5.000.

And this was before Omicron was known.

Re: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

#337

Post by lamontcg »

naasking wrote: post #333
lamontcg wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somatic Hypermutation works on vaccine antigens as well, and diversifies B-cells so that the B-cells will recognize many spike mutations. Anyone who has been vaccinated or recovered probably has some B-cells which match this spike, even if they're not amplified and expressed into circulating neutralizing antibodies. T-cells on the other hand don't diversify as much but they recognize primarily the host MHC section of…

> You're pushing a narrative that spike-only vaccines are worse in the face of mutation, and there's just no evidence of that "Pushing a narrative" is a pretty uncharitable interpretation of a short off-hand comment. There actually is some evidence that the infected have a stronger immune protection to exposure than the vaccinated, and there are mechanistic reasons this would make sense, so I wouldn't go so far as th…

There's mechanistic reasons why the infected would have weaker immune protection because other viral proteins like ORF8 suppress MHC-I expression and T-cell responses. All the studies that I've seen that look at the problem properly find that recovery from infection provides highly variable protection with younger and less severe symptoms providing much less than vaccination.
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