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

The mutation that helps Delta spread

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 641 posts

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#151

Post by jmfldn »

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 basically fine though and everyone else I know is too who got it recently. The point is that it does seem like this Delta variant breaks through regularly and it does seem (again, purely anecdotal) like it's v infectious. Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. It does highlight however the need to not be complacent. Vaccines don't seem to be stopping the spread right now as much as you might think, and the high number of cases combined with high vaccination rates is an obvious selection pressure. More variants are inevitably coming and it does seem like this virus is bucking the trend and not necessarily becoming less potent despite increased tranmissability in some variants

My conclusion is that, whilst I welcome the UK being sort of "back to normal", let's keep up the mask wearing, hygiene standards and so on. It's a balance but I sense things are getting a bit too lax. I'm not overly anxious but let's stick to the precautionary principle a bit more.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#152

Post by criticaltinker »

nradov wrote: post #127
hncurious wrote: post #70

Covid is going to be endemic like the flu and cold. It's not going to be eradicated, unfortunately, and I don't think we've come to terms with this yet. Now what's our plan exactly? Get vaccinated every 6 - 12 months indefinitely and always wear masks? What's our goal and what's our new normal?

Same as with what probably happened with HCoV-OC43, another betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2. Evidence indicates that it caused a worldwide pandemic that killed a lot of people starting in 1889. Now it's endemic. Most of us catch it when we're young and healthy which gives us partial immunity later. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.111…

> Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing death

Yes individuals who have been vaccinated or recovered from natural infection will have durable immunity and significantly lower risk of severe outcomes like hospitalization and death. [5][6]

The real question: is mass vaccination effective at preventing the spread and increasing trasmission/virulence of variants of concern? A growing body of the scientific literature and evidence suggests not. [1][2][3][4]

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be using vaccines, rather we should use them in a highly targeted way, and supplemented by other therapeutic modalities.

[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

[3] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...

[4] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...

[5] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

[6] Rapid induction of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells is associated with coordinated humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#153

Post by baxtr »

nradov wrote: post #127
hncurious wrote: post #70

Covid is going to be endemic like the flu and cold. It's not going to be eradicated, unfortunately, and I don't think we've come to terms with this yet. Now what's our plan exactly? Get vaccinated every 6 - 12 months indefinitely and always wear masks? What's our goal and what's our new normal?

Same as with what probably happened with HCoV-OC43, another betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2. Evidence indicates that it caused a worldwide pandemic that killed a lot of people starting in 1889. Now it's endemic. Most of us catch it when we're young and healthy which gives us partial immunity later. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.111…

Yes, exactly.

More info on the 1889 pandemic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#154

Post by kzrdude »

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…

It's not normal until we can forget about it all. (So it will take time!)

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#155

Post by schmichael »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #143
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to COVID not mutating as quickly, I think the end game is everyone getting immune, through a combination of repeated vaccinations and infections.

I got covid last march, and got it again one month ago. I was very sick for three weeks on my second covid infection. I think we are about to face the harsh reality that covid is never going away, and immunity and is never going to happen. The virus will mutate and find new ways to infect

> I think we are about to face...

I feel like this is what most experts were saying from near the beginning: this is not a few months problem. This is an ongoing problem that will require us to adapt just as it adapts. I remember many articles in 2020 projecting what the virus might look like 5 or 8 years out.

Lockdowns and other extreme measures were about flattening infection curves to keep from overwhelming health systems, not about eradicating the virus outright.

Masks and distancing are about getting the virus to a manageable infection rate to minimize impact on our new normal lives.

Vaccines are the only way out without high mortality and extreme pressure on our health systems. Whether it requires vaccines like polio (one or two and safe forever) or flu (annual) is yet to be determined AFAIK. It seems like somewhere in the middle is most likely at least for many years to come.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#156

Post by johnbaker92 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #145
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…

> - Lockdowns should have stopped covid. Maybe if people obeyed them, which they did not. > - Masks should have stopped covid. Maybe if people wore them, which they did not. > - Vaccines should have stopped covid. Maybe if people got them, which they did not. And now that there are new variants in the wild because of people not doing all of those things, the vaccines, lockdowns, and masks still keep ICU beds from ove…

Have we perhaps forgotten about Sweden which:

- Did not force lockdown / masks onto anybody

- Has one of the least vaccinated population in Europe (around 40% afaik)

- Has had 0 covid deaths in the last couple weeks.

- Has not had it worse than countries with stricter mandates.

Are we also forgetting about Iceland / Israel which are among the most vaccinated countries in the world (on top of having stringent mandates) and are basically experiencing their largest spike in cases since the beginning of this pandemic?

At the end of the day, it's also good to realise so called experts do not seem to have all the answers even though it's "backed by science". Going back to common sense and taking a step back is what will get us all out of this.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#157

Post by Florin_Andrei »

hutzlibu wrote: post #61

I see the sentiment here expressed, that Covid is far from over. To be honest, I stopped following news since being fully vaccinated some time ago, so I am kind of ignorant here. Is the main problem, the unvaccinated, or that the Delta (and co.) variants are still, too dangerous for vaccinated people? Or is it the fear, that they will get more dangerous?

> I stopped following news since being fully vaccinated some time ago

You're mostly fine, but you should not get disconnected completely from the news.

Vaccine efficacy seems to wane slowly (faster for old people). Probably before the 1 year mark you should get a booster shot.

The Delta variant is skewing some of the initial estimates, for the worse.

The odds that you will catch the virus but have no symptoms or repercussions are still rather substantial, but definitely less than 50% (estimates vary). So there is a chance that you can still transmit it. Please wear a mask indoors in public places.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#158

Post by dannyz »

empthought wrote: post #85
achenatx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The likely scenario is that it turns into cold/flu. Everyone either gets the vaccine or the virus and we are all mostly immune. It mutates a little and once it mutates just enough to spread substantially everyone who gets it gets immune. Only a fraction of the population will get any particular mutation. I remember having the debate that herd immunity has never happened without a vaccine. Which is just BS. Every dise…

You don't understand what "herd immunity" means. Herd immunity means eliminating a disease within a community ("herd"). It does not mean endemic case incidence with socially tolerable outcomes, or whatever loosey-goosey idea you mean by "equilibrium." Herd immunity means the contagion is eliminated. It has never happened worldwide without a vaccine, and I'm unaware of any virus where it has been sustained within a co…

At some point this is just arguing semantics, but my understanding is that the herd immunity threshold is defined when Reff < 1. You could have Reff=0.99999999, which counts as herd immunity being reached, but it would take a very long time for the virus to actually disappear. Even if we do momentarily hit Reff < 1 for the delta variant, there could be mutations/waning immunity that causes it to stay around 1 becoming endemic.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#159

Post by Florin_Andrei »

nradov wrote: post #129
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is downvoted because it's pseudo-science.

At least in the case of vitamin D it's hardly pseudoscience. Multiple clinical studies have found that hypovitaminosis D is a serious risk factor for COVID-19. https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/

It is correlated, but I am not aware of even a single study that shows actual causal determination.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#160

Post by kriskrunch »

tomrod wrote: post #108
sreque wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that the U.S. federal government in particular has been pretending for a while that we can get to zero COVID, then blaming the unvaccinated when it doesn't happen. First, they said we need 50% vaccination to achieve, herd immunity. Then 60%. Then 70%. Then 80%. When things don't work out, they vilify and blame the unvaccinated. In reality, unvaccinated with natural immunity are likely more protect…

Please share some scientific citations showing natural immunity gives better protection than vaccines. This runs counter to what I'm hearing from my virologist sources.

Here are a couple of preprint studies that show naturally acquired immunity provides protection.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33948610/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33907755/

Meanwhile the CDC published this study showing the opposite:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

I can understand why people are confused.

There appears to be two camps, one that believes that science can defeat this disease, and in the other camp people that believe we need to learn to adjust to our new reality.

I don't understand how a man made vaccine can provide better protection to the virus better than my body after recovering, but I'm not specialist.

Aren't the pharmaceutical companies financially incentivized to provide minimal protection, and annual booster shots? Why would they make something better?

As long as fear navigates our course, we won't see an end to this.

Post reply on HN