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The mutation that helps Delta spread

nature.com

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Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#421

Post by dcolkitt »

betwixthewires wrote: post #411
Jeema101 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I am mistaken here, but... are you saying that it would need to kill 1/6th of the population every year (instead of 1/600) before you will consider putting a piece of cloth over your face? What's so terrible about wearing a mask?

You're misdirecting and missing the point entirely. While I'm not quite anti mask like the parent comment, it is an important question to consider, it is always a trade off. What severity warrant what measures? If there's still covid like now in 10 years, will we all have to wear masks at work until we retire? Is this feasible? If not, then when do we stop? Will the people advocating it ever tell us to stop? If not,…

Exactly! I think we can all disagree about preferences and risk-tolerance and that's fine. Society is about learning to live with compromise. But what I don't like is how nobody will pre-commit ahead of time about what the acceptable tradeoffs are.

What are the targets? How long do we expect restrictions to stay in place for? If we miss those targets, where do we go from there? Can we just all be clear about this up front, pre-commit and stick to the plan. I'm not even saying that unexpected conditions may necessitate calling an audible. But the burden should be on those who are asking for it to explain why they screwed up.

Right now it just feels like policymakers are making it up as they along, and virtually nobody feels like its leadership in any sense of the word.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#422

Post by sa1 »

OliverGilan wrote: post #383
aflag wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so bad about face masks? Just trying to understand.

I wear glasses and masks are basically untenable. I have yet to wear a mask and not fog up my glasses. Maybe I'm just an idiot, I don't know, but being able to see properly is far more valuable to me than not getting COVID (in it's current state and threat level to me).

There are also anti-fogging solutions (basically soap solutions) available to apply on glasses.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#423

Post by yyyk »

kriskrunch wrote: post #160
tomrod wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Vaccines are part of our adjustment. There's one camp which tries to adjust, and another which places hands in their ears.

>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.

The same way an antibiotic could cure certain diseases much better than your own body. Besides, you're much more likely to survive the vaccine than the disease.

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

Efficiency isn't something pharmaceutical companies could just decide in advance. If they try to make something inefficient, there's a good chance it won't be effective at all, and they'll lose all the money invested in R&D.

And ultimately, less effective vaccines will be crowded out of the market, we already see this in some countries with AZ and J&J.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#424

Post by raphlinus »

OneLeggedCat wrote: post #387
raphlinus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novavax is a protein subunit vaccine, with the spike protein only. The Chinese CoronaVac and Indian Covaxin are traditional inactivated virus vaccines.

... Does that mean that CoronaVac and Covaxin might eventually prove better than current vaccines widely available in the US?

That seems very unlikely. If a variant evolves that has significant evasion of the vaccines, then we should be able to retool the mRNA vaccines quickly. And T-cell response is more robust to antigenic drift than the antibody response, though not as well studied. See [1] for a very detailed investigation into antigenic drift and vaccine evasion.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00573-0

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#425

Post by vkou »

walterbell wrote: post #351
vkou wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not 137 confirmed re-infections. It's 35,124 re-infections, 137 of which were analyzed in a particular way . Your understanding of the situation differs by two and a half orders of magnitude from reality. And that number has nowhere to go but up, as antibody levels in survivors drop.

Where "in a particular way" is highly accurate genomic sequencing rather than a PCR test with a long list of known problems, such that the CDC is discontinuing usage at the end of 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert... i.e., the questionable number is orders of magnitude larger than the reliable number. > as antibody levels in survivors drop Recovered survivors have multiple mechanisms…

> Where "in a particular way" is highly accurate genomic sequencing rather than a PCR test with a long list of known problems,

The particular way requires both the original diagnosis of the first infection AND the diagnosis of the second infection to be done the same way.

Most infections never get diagnosed that way in the first place, which is why such a comparison is impossible for the vast majority of cases.

What exactly is your theory? That those 35,000 people never had COVID in the first place, or that what they got the second time around isn't COVID? Or that we can disregard every other word in that report, because the only word that matters in it is '137'?

> , which have been proven effective against SARS1 after 17 years.

Unfortunately for those people, we're not dealing with a SARS1 outbreak.

How many years have they been proven effective against SARS2?

> Survivors don't need boosters. Those who take non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines may need boosters.

The science disagrees with your gut feeling. [1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#426

Post by betwixthewires »

foldr wrote: post #328
singingfish wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it kind of is because it's got a similar binding affinity to heparin. Heparin is a first responder chemical in the immune system. Coopting a low level part of the immune system like that is rather more dangerous than if it were getting entry via some other mechanism. On the other hand I could be wrong about this.

Hundreds of millions of people have received vaccines that (either directly or indirectly) expose them to the spike protein in question, so clearly it can’t be dangerous.

Please tell me you're joking.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#427

Post by dcolkitt »

aflag wrote: post #370
dcolkitt wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a question of preferences that too often gets buried in this debate. If Covid becomes endemic at around its current severity, what level of pandemic restrictions are you willing to accept forever? For me personally, Covid would have to be at least 100 times worse before I’d support masking forever. But I get the sense that some people barely see any downside to it. I think these cross-views drive so much if t…

What's so bad about face masks? Just trying to understand.

Socializing is extremely high friction in a mask. Pre-mask, I'd make small talk with store clerks or waiters all the time. After masking, I can count on one hand the number of times that happened.

You struggle to understand people's muffled words, they struggle to understand yours. Facial expressions, the most important component of non-verbal communication, are half-hidden. Conveying a smile, the universal way to express warmth, is completely not possible.

Happiness psychology research has confirmed again and again that pleasant interactions with other humans is one of the primary sources of joy in our lives. Seeing each other faces is a critical component of that. People who lose their legs or arms will recover to baseline happiness in a year or so. People who's faces are disfigured never recover. The face is the core of human interaction.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#428

Post by walterbell »

tedunangst wrote: post #393
walterbell wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should already-immune, recovered people be vaccinated?

Simple answer is many people incorrectly self diagnose as recovered, and it's faster and easier to vaccinate than test for actual prior infection. And it provides even more robust immunity.

On the topic of tests, the T-cell blood draw test (https://t-detect.com) costs $210, is more accurate and less time-bounded than antibody testing.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#429

Post by betwixthewires »

tunesmith wrote: post #300
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…

"Selective pressure". I find this phrase really confusing, because I think people use it differently. I'm still trying to nail down my own knowledge about this, but here's the gist I have so far. Viruses are not like bacteria. Bacteria can mutate in direct response to antibiotics. Viruses cannot mutate in direct response to vaccines. Some people use "selection pressure" to describe what happens with bacteria and anti…

Bacteria do not mutate directly, in fact, no living creature we know of mutates directly in response to anything. All evolution is random mutation in offspring randomly providing fitness to itself and it's progeny above its predecessors and peers. That is what Darwinian evolution is.

Re: The mutation that helps Delta spread

#430

Post by sethammons »

nneonneo wrote: post #402
cryptonector wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iaIYlcD_Po

Your video claims that masks don’t work because they’ll leak vape smoke. However, masks aren’t meant to be airtight, but rather a barrier against droplets (like the kind expelled when you cough or sneeze). Droplets are what primarily carry the virus across long distances.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

This says that the virus can be an aerosol and that this is what causes infection after long time periods after a spreader was in the area.

Can someone confirm if vape is an appropriate analog to aerosol virus in our breath? If so, the video is very convincing that masks are ineffective at preventing infection.

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