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The mutation that helps Delta spread

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Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#171

Post by Florin_Andrei »

sfink wrote: post #167
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 repe…

I disagree. Before Delta, it was reasonable to resume almost all activities after being fully vaccinated. I don't believe that is true any longer. There are too many breakthrough cases, presumably driven by a much higher viral load that can overwhelm defenses. (The figures I have seen are 1000x in the upper respiratory tract of infected people; I haven't been following well enough to know what the increase is in actu…

Well, I made no predictions for the future. :)

Vaccinated people are still mostly fine, even with Delta. You just don't get the close to 100% protection against severe disease, it's a little lower than that. It's still pretty good protection against severe cases (talking about mRNA vaccines).

What's clearly disappointing is that the vaccines are not very good at preventing Delta from spreading. I have not seen good estimates, but the numbers floating around seem to indicate the vaccines (again, mRNA) are still at least 50% effective against spread, but nowhere near 100%. That's the biggest gap right now.

It is true that viral loads are orders of magnitude higher with Delta. That is still compatible with all the statements above.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#172

Post by christkv »

I'm following the studies around nasal covid vaccines. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/researchers-begin-...

The theory is that they will create a better early response in the cells where the virus makes first contact making it more likely to stop replication early.

If it works it would seem this could be a more effective way to vaccine for respiratory viruses.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#173

Post by raphlinus »

pengaru wrote: post #141
Trasmatta wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get shots for the flu every year (or at least we should). That's the historical precedent.

Influenza is a different virus which mutates aggressively (recombinant), I'm not under the impression sars-cov2 is similar in this regard.

Buckle up. Quoted tweet[1] below:

Congrats to Ben Jackson, @maciekboni, @viralverity, @AineToole, @robertson_lab, @EvolveDotZoo, @arambaut et al for their recent Cell paper.

Rock solid evidence of alpha/non-alpha recombination in #SARSCoV2 in the UK.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00984-3

[1]: https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/142851583662971699...

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#174

Post by kriskrunch »

tshaddox wrote: post #136
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…

Personally I think the real problem with COVID is that it is a disease which kills many people and harms many more, not that some people supposedly vilify unvaccinated people.

Why not fight heart disease with this voracity, since it kills more people?

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#175

Post by throwawaysea »

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?

I certainly hope it isn't leading to a society where papers are checked and masks are always required. Although I am vaccinated, I feel vaccine mandates constitute a breach of bodily autonomy and medical privacy. As for masks - I find them stifling in more ways than one - it is hard to breathe, it fogs up glasses, it causes me to feel overheated, and it really diminishes human connection and exchange of emotions. I think the impact of masks on developing children who need natural socialization will be drastic and dangerous.

So my take is that at some point, we just need to deal with it as a background event and move on. The infection fatality rate for COVID is incredibly low, particularly for those under 50. It is irrational to worry about it to the extent we are, since we don't typically worry about such rare possibilities. I am also betting that phenomenon like "long COVID" will either be found to be other conflating factors, or found to be a phenomenon associated with any illness. It's just that we're so focused on COVID as an entire species, that we're spotting all the little things we would normally ignore.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#176

Post by tehjoker »

criticaltinker wrote: post #106
tehjoker wrote: post #2

Is there any information on what the upper bound might be on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2? I think a lot of people just assume one big jump consumes most of the range, but we've seen at least three big jumps so far ("Doug", "Alpha", and "Delta").

Here is a fantastic resource from the UK government that answers your question in great detail [1]. > As eradication of SARS-CoV-2 will be unlikely, we have high confidence in stating that there will always be variants. > We describe hypothetical scenarios by which SARS-CoV-2 could further evolve and acquire, through mutation, phenotypes of concern, which we assess according to possibility. > Scenario One: A variant…

Thank you!

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#177

Post by Retric »

tunesmith wrote: post #123
Retric wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.76 assumes normal conditions, social distancing literally changes the equation. Mask use for example pushes that down. It’s easier to get below 1 with a 50% vaccination rate than a 0% rate. Meaning we can open up more without overwhelming hospitals.

That's pretty much what I said in my last line. The problem is, "opening up more" generally tends to mean things like less masking and less social distancing. So to the extent that Rt is pushed down by mitigation measures, Rt gets pushed back up when those mitigation measures end.

The advantage in my mind is you can avoid the most costly mitigation strategies.

Unfortunately, vaccination rates are age dependent so opening schools is a very high risk activity. Children are at low risk for COVID but they would be a major vector for transmission as everyone under 12 is unvaccinated.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#178

Post by sreque »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #109
sreque wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should be a clue that something is wrong with your numbers. 10% of unvaccinated people getting COVID are absolutely not ending up in the ICU. It's not even remotely close. Also, as good as the vaccines are against delta, natural immunity is doing even better: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-makary-says-natu... https://www.deseret.com/coronavirus/2021/7/20/22584134/whats... https://arieh.substack.com/…

I'm counting ICU admissions among the unvaccinated separately, not against the population as a whole. When you consider that the majority of the population (65% total, 80% eligible) is vaccinated, then you have to separate the two groups because the outcomes are totally different. But I did spot something wrong with the way I'm counting, so yes the 10% is probably wrong. The reason is that the daily new case count gi…

Your biggest problem is that your data isn't accurate.

The page notes that it's case count isn't necessarily correct. This page shows the total case delta at 650 for today versus yesterday: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread

Whereas the spreadsheet from your page says 426. It's not even clear to me that the 650 number is accurate because not everyone may necessarily be reporting they have COVID. I know when my whole family got COVID we didn't report it to the government. I've seen estimates in the U.S. that actual case count is more than double reported case count: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/07/us-covid...

Secondly, ICU case counts are based on people who are in the ICU and happen to have COVID, not people who are in the ICU primarily because of COVID. So for yesterday the delta in ICU COVID case count was 15, but we don't know how many of those net new 15 are actually in the ICU for COVID symptoms primarily.

So taking the raw numbers for yesterday's delta, that's 15 / 650 as a rough estimate (dividing the deltas isn't really what we want but it's the best I can come up with), and that lands us at 2.3%. I also believe that number is far too high for the other reasons outlined above.

For comparison, the numbers here seem to indicate a 5% chance of hospitalization for the unvaccinated: https://www.wbay.com/2021/08/19/covid-19-wisconsin-dhs-compa...

They give no ICU numbers, so we can expect the ICU odds to be closer to 2% again, and their data suffers from the same problems.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#179

Post by nradov »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #159
nradov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you claiming that you read all the studies linked above and none of them show actual causal determination? We can't really prove anything 100% in biology but the totality of evidence is very strong here.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#180

Post by travoc »

ssklash wrote: post #148
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. Not everyone cooperated with lockdowns, rendering them less effective. > - Masks should have stopped covid. Not everyone wore masks, rendering them less effective. > - Vaccines should have stopped covid. Not everyone is getting vaccinated, rendering it less effective. I see a pattern here with an obvious solution, and it's not doubting the "true" science and declaring ourselve…

Each of these scenarios was predictable and in fact, predicted by many. Yet here we are, still pretending to be shocked at the intensity of human autonomy.

If your plan requires everyone on earth to cooperate, it’s not a good plan.

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