Delta variant

[tomcat 569]

The Delta variant of Covid 19 is on the horizon. Alabama, like many southern states lags in vaccination rates. What is the point of resistance? No one knows how debilitating this may be…yet so many resist. Why? How many of you are vaccinated…if not, why?

 

[autigeremt 6,617]

I’m vaccinated and I had it twice in a 12 month period prior. Politics is the main reason a lot of people resist in my opinion. 

[SaturdayGT 719]

2 hours ago, tomcat said:

The Delta variant of Covid 19 is on the horizon. Alabama, like many southern states lags in vaccination rates. What is the point of resistance? No one knows how debilitating this may be…yet so many resist. Why? How many of you are vaccinated…if not, why?

 

You do you! Wear 3 masks...save yourself!!...sit back, watch the Armageddon....

[AU9377 4,931]

I'm doing me.  I'm fully vaccinated and willing to get a booster when/if one is needed.   The number of educated people that are willing to believe the absolute nonsense coming from many that refuse to get vaccinated is insane.

[bigbird 60,525]

9 hours ago, autigeremt said:

Politics is the main reason a lot of people resist in my opinion. 

That's a huge part, a somewhat smaller faction is opposed to being told they HAVE to do something.  It's resistance to the insistence.

BTW, all in my house, minus my son, are vaccinated.  He's not just because we need a little more data with his condition.

[johnnyAU 3,630]

Getting mine today. Said all along I'd wait until the panic was over and get it after the rush of craziness. Also likely had Covid in the initial phases in late Feb 2019. Wife and kids already vaccinated. I was never against getting it willingly, only having it mandated or being forced to use a vaccine passport. 

Had I been part of one of the more compromised groups with pre-existing health issues I would have gotten it sooner. 

[SLAG-91 1,483]

The Spirit variant is the one we'll need to watch out for...

Tongue-in-cheek comment aside, I am ready for both the outwardly demonstrative "I ain't gettin' that vaccine ever" crowd and the sanctimonious "You're an awful person if you don't get vaccinated" crowd to shut the hell up. Neither segment helps their purported cause.

 

[Bottomfeeder 244]

This really tells it all. How many Americans lost their lives because of censorship and the demonization of effective treatments that didn't require your "lips turn blue" before admission to the hospital? I think Google, Zuckerberg, Twitter, Fauci and a whole host of others need to be held Libel for censoring scientific discussion and medicine. I'll get the bracelets. 

https://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=6259740044001

[TitanTiger 20,482]

The Pfizer vaccine is 88% effective against symptomatic disease for the Delta variant.  It's at least 96% effective at preventing serious illness that requires hospitalization and 100% effective at preventing death for the Delta variant.  I imagine the numbers for the Moderna one are right in line with that.  

At this point, it makes no sense unless you've got a particular medical condition that makes vaccines problematic for you to continue to hold off.  We've dispensed over 2.6 billion doses of the vaccines worldwide, most of them being from Pfizer or Moderna.  Even if you believe the complete horse***t scare numbers that dunces like Tucker Carlson put out there claiming over 5000 deaths from the vaccines, that's a death rate of 0.00019%.  And anyone with a scintilla of scientific understanding on such things knows that number is totally bogus.  There might be a few dozen cases that could legitimately be linked to the vaccines, worldwide. 

Compare that to 178 million confirmed COVID cases and 3.8 million deaths worldwide from COVID.  It's a total no-brainer at this point.

[Bottomfeeder 244]

I really wonder what the actual efficacy is with Pfizer since I'm vaxxed with it. They call them breakthrough cases with respect to the positive tests whether asymptomatic or not. I just hope I don't catch it or experience ADE or pathogenic priming. The disease causes enough harm without having to worry about a vaxx that may or may not work. I just hope it works because they are saying it's 96% effective against the Delta variant. The video above is not Tucker, though I support Tucker's opinion over most of the other media outlets. I definitely trust Dr. Kory because we need more than a vaccine. I believe HHS (Biden admin) is spending $3.2 BILLION for the development and manufacturing of antivirals to combat Covid-19 (MERCK, I need to see the chemical formula for molnupiravir). The "there's no money" in Ivermectin has it's place in history books and has saved lives while Fauci is "sweating" the emails between he and ("looks engineered") Kristian. I'm just enjoying the show to be honest. Then there is Ralph "Trailblazer" Baric and his involvement. Oh, and let's not forget Peter Daszak's involvement either.

Dr. Fuellmich is filing the lawsuits and criminal charges (Nuremberg 2.0). 

https://pdfs.journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/9000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.98040.pdf

Quote

“We modified our science team to remove ethical restraints.”

Back in 1977 a very peculiar disease began to sweep across Russia, and once scientists had isolated it they discovered it was a rather unique strain of the H1N1 Swine Flu. In the years that followed genetic analysis looking to determine where it might’ve come from found something rather odd: It was very similar to strains of H1N1 that hadn’t been in circulation for decades, and seemed to be the product of “sequential passage in an animal reservoir” which was determined by its vast genetic distance from any other present strain of flu, just like COVID-19 which also appears so distant from any related coronavirus that it’s been placed in its own clade, an isolated branch way out on its own in the viral family tree – meaning it’s the lone example of its kind, and doesn’t clump together with all the other known coronaviruses. This finding has lead scientists to conclude that it wasn’t a natural virus, and either leaked out or was released as part of a vaccine trial gone awry.

https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/mBio.01013-15

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bies.202000091

Edited June 23, 2021 by Bottomfeeder
Because I needed to.

[tomcat 569]

Get the damn vaccine. You want be chipped. You may actually do some good and save someone’s life. Maybe you own.

[TitanTiger 20,482]

The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported on Monday.

 

[Bottomfeeder 244]

I hope and pray folks get vaccinated against Covid-19 (mitigation of severe disease as the endpoint) because the Delta Variant is more contagious. Some of the new symptoms remind me of hay fever, common cold or allergies. However, this is not a disease to be taken lightly.

I'm just mad that ivermectin, azithromycin, doxycycline, and other treatments aren't approved for use in the United States in eradicating this virus from our midst (I believe corticosteroids and monoclonal antibodies are approved for use in treatment, but I think effective treatment should start early with ivermectin to obliterate viral replication I-MASK+ and MATH+). Remdesivir has shown to have little effect with the endpoint of severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

Quote

The vaccines available are reportedly effective, so is vaccination vital?

Vaccination is absolutely key. While there is not a vaccine for anything that is 100% effective, we know that the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines have about an 79-88% protection rate. Based on what we know of vaccines in general against viruses, even if someone who is vaccinated becomes infected, their symptoms and clinical course are more likely to be mild rather than severe. We are seeing that in the community. The mRNA vaccine is 96% effective at preventing hospitalizations in those who do get infected.

I have links embedded here to help everyone understand what we are up against. It's not pretty. Just look at India. The medication that brought that under control was the use of Ivermectin as a standard of care for outpatient treatment, reduction in transmission, inpatient treatment, and prophylaxis. All, except one Indian state, used Ivermectin. That state's case rates skyrocketed while the others went down dramatically. It seems to me that the USA's position is get gene therapy or die, and that is just unacceptable. We should have effective treatments for those who cannot get vaccinated because of health reasons. That's where we have failed!

https://dothaneagle.com/news/state-and-regional/auburn-professor-discusses-delta-variants-of-covid-19-outlines-what-to-expect-in-coming-months/article_5c0ea658-d9bb-11eb-b423-afd3dd719d01.html

https://covid19criticalcare.com/

Edited July 2, 2021 by Bottomfeeder

[homersapien 11,373]

On 6/17/2021 at 1:01 PM, SLAG-91 said:

The Spirit variant is the one we'll need to watch out for...

Tongue-in-cheek comment aside, I am ready for both the outwardly demonstrative "I ain't gettin' that vaccine ever" crowd and the sanctimonious "You're an awful person if you don't get vaccinated" crowd to shut the hell up. Neither segment helps their purported cause.

 

Bird, I am really surprised you "liked" this.  People who refuse to get vaccinated are a direct threat to your son and others who shouldn't take the vaccine for whatever health reasons.

Edited July 2, 2021 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,373]

1 hour ago, Bottomfeeder said:

I hope and pray folks get vaccinated against Covid-19 (mitigation of severe disease as the endpoint) because the Delta Variant is more contagious. Some of the new symptoms remind me of hay fever, common cold or allergies. However, this is not a disease to be taken lightly.

I'm just mad that ivermectin, azithromycin, doxycycline, and other treatments aren't approved for use in the United States in eradicating this virus from our midst (I believe corticosteroids and monoclonal antibodies are approved for use in treatment, but I think effective treatment should start early with ivermectin to obliterate viral replication I-MASK+ and MATH+). Remdesivir has shown to have little effect with the endpoint of severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

I have links embedded here to help everyone understand what we are up against. It's not pretty. Just look at India. The medication that brought that under control was the use of Ivermectin as a standard of care for outpatient treatment, reduction in transmission, inpatient treatment, and prophylaxis. All, except one Indian state, used Ivermectin. That state's case rates skyrocketed while the others went down dramatically. It seems to me that the USA's position is get gene therapy or die, and that is just unacceptable. We should have effective treatments for those who cannot get vaccinated because of health reasons. That's where we have failed!

https://dothaneagle.com/news/state-and-regional/auburn-professor-discusses-delta-variants-of-covid-19-outlines-what-to-expect-in-coming-months/article_5c0ea658-d9bb-11eb-b423-afd3dd719d01.html

https://covid19criticalcare.com/

Approving drugs for treating a given disease for which it hasn't been tested is risky.

Are all of the drugs you mentioned approved for something else?

[Bottomfeeder 244]

15 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Approving drugs for treating a given disease for which it hasn't been tested is risky.

Are all of the drugs you mentioned approved for something else?

https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Abstract/9000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.98040.aspx

They would be prescribed off-label which doctors do all of the time. Dr. Tess Lawrie just released a study with meta-analysis that favors the use of Ivermectin (anti-parasitic normally prescribe for scabies and lice). I personally know people who were prescribed Azithromycin for coronavirus infection and they said it was a game-changer for them. Under a microscope, Ivermectin obliterates SARS-CoV-2 virions (according to videos I have watched with Dr. Pierre Kory speaking). The duration of dosages depends on the severity of the infection. Early treatment usually means less time having to take it. It has also been used to treat Long Covid. More ICU doctors are treating some stages of the disease with a combination of drugs, from anti-coagulants to corticosteroids.

 

Quote

 

Ivermectin is an anti-parasite medication. Ivermectin is used to treat infections in the body that are caused by certain parasites. Ivermectin is currently being investigated as a treatment for coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID-19. The FDA has not approved ivermectin for use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans.

Azithromycin is an antibiotic that fights bacteria. Azithromycin is used to treat many different types of infections caused by bacteria, such as respiratory infections, skin infections, ear infections, eye infections, and sexually transmitted diseases. Azithromycin may also be used for purposes not listed in this medication guide.

Doxycycline is a tetracycline antibiotic that fights bacteria in the body. Doxycycline is used to treat many different bacterial infections, such as acne, urinary tract infections, intestinal infections, respiratory infections, eye infections, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, periodontitis (gum disease), and others.

 

DO NOT buy Ivermectin that is meant for horses from the Farm or Tractor Supply Stores. If you want to take medication talk to a doctor, that's what they do.

[homersapien 11,373]

1 minute ago, Bottomfeeder said:

https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Abstract/9000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.98040.aspx

They would be prescribed off-label which doctors do all of the time. Dr. Tess Lawrie just released a study with meta-analysis that favors the use of Ivermectin (anti-parasitic normally prescribe for scabies and lice). I personally know people who were prescribed Azithromycin for coronavirus infection and they said it was a game-changer for them. Under a microscope, Ivermectin obliterates SARS-CoV-2 virions (according to videos I have watched with Dr. Pierre Kory speaking). The duration of dosages depends on the severity of the infection. Early treatment usually means less time having to take it. It has also been used to treat Long Covid. More ICU doctors are treating some stages of the disease with a combination of drugs, from anti-coagulants to corticosteroids.

 

DO NOT buy Ivermectin that is meant for horses from the Farm or Tractor Supply Stores. If you want to take medication talk to a doctor, that's what they do.

Any reputable doctor will tell you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or words to that effect.

To forgo vaccination because of reputed therapies is crazy.

[Bottomfeeder 244]

38 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Any reputable doctor will tell you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or words to that effect.

To forgo vaccination because of reputed therapies is crazy.

I agree. But there are some people who cannot take the vaccine due to organ transplants among other reasons. Shedding the virus is still a concern in that vaccination does not prevent viral shedding. That's where masks can help those people. It's not always about me or you, it's about us all.

https://degraw.substack.com/p/joe-rogan-and-dr-joseph-varon-ignite?fbclid=IwAR3vnIw6PlBE6dBtDr56w0Io2pN1y8yWRl2iVvjMQX45cLrwlqWffoN-tYk

Edited July 2, 2021 by Bottomfeeder

[Bottomfeeder 244]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166354220300528

DRASTIC Members: Ducky, Alina Chan and BillyBostic did all of the work. I just copy and pasted it.

Kristian Anderson "some features (potentially) look engineered." Well, No $#@!.

The furin cleavage site between S1 and S2 of the spike protein. Looks engineered Tony. 

Quote

Gotta love a Phd

Alina Chan
@Ayjchan 

2006 study inserts furin cleavage site into SARS-CoV spike at the exact residue where SARS-CoV-2's PRRA(R) site is - and demonstrates enhanced cell-to-cell fusion

Conclusion: Shi ZL & her lab are keenly aware of RRAR as a cleavage site in a CoV spike protein. (SC2's FCS: PRRAR)

https://buzzchronicles.com/BillyBostickson/b/all/13987/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=referral

To rule out that wild type (natural) SARS-CoV wasn't already getting cleaved at this site without a notable FCS, Follis et al. mutated that arginine at position 667 (aka R667) and found no impact on Spike expression or glycosylation, confirming no evidence of cleavage.
Then, Follis et al. engineered the BCoV RRSR(R677) FCS into SARS to see what would happen (Fig 1B). They found that for cleavage to occur, you had to insert an extra residue similar to the BCoV alignment, and not perturb the sequence downstream of R677.

"cleavage of the SARS S glycoprotein can be achieved by the introduction of a furin recognition motif, especially at R667. The differences in the degree of cleavage between the two R667 mutants, and in SLLR, suggest specificity in the recognition of the engineered furin sites"

At this point, I want to draw your attention back to Coutard et al.'s figure which shows an updated list of CoVs and their FCS sites: SARS2 SPRRAR, HKU1 SRRKRR, OC43 KNRRSR, MERS TPRSVR. In many naturally found CoVs, this FCS at R667 exists and the sequence can be quite flexible.

Follis et al. showed improved cell-to-cell fusion by the SARS Spike with the inserted FCS. However, they only tested the infectivity of Spike-presenting particles on human 293T kidney cells. We know now the FCS does not affect kidney cell infection, but impacts other cell types.To summarize, the S1/S2 FCS exists in natural CoVs, but has not been observed in SARS-related-CoVs. Scientists tested introduction of FCS at R667 in SARS. Later discovered in MERS that FCS enables infection of more cell types. Now we know SARS2 FCS confers infection advantages.
Ending of another unsatisfying tweetorial: there is zero evidence that confirms that the SARS-CoV-2 S1/S2 PRRA(R) FCS arose naturally or artificially, but neither scenario can be ruled out.

PRRAR is from bacteria? SARS-CoV-2 is a bacteriophage? Here are the BLAST results of this part of the genetic make up of SARS-CoV-2 (Credit: Ducky). With 100% identity. And here I thought a motif was referring to some kind of literature or movie, lol. No, it's furin dummy. Maybe a "receptor binding motif?"

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bottomfeeder

[homersapien 11,373]

The good news is that the current vaccines offer protection from Delta.

The bad news is that there are enough unvaccinated persons to cause more variants to be produced, some of which may possibly affect vaccinated persons.   Thanks MAGAs! 

 

The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta

Vaccines are still beating the variants, but the unvaccinated world is being pummeled.

 

By Ed Yong

July 1, 2021

 

Fifteen months after the novel coronavirus shut down much of the world, the pandemic is still raging. Few experts guessed that by this point, the world would have not one vaccine but many, with 3 billion doses already delivered. At the same time, the coronavirus has evolved into super-transmissible variants that spread more easily. The clash between these variables will define the coming months and seasons. Here, then, are three simple principles to understand how they interact. Each has caveats and nuances, but together, they can serve as a guide to our near-term future.

1. The vaccines are still beating the variants.

The vaccines have always had to contend with variants: The Alpha variant (also known as B.1.1.7) was already spreading around the world when the first COVID-19 vaccination campaigns began. And in real-world tests, they have consistently lived up to their extraordinary promise. The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna reduce the risk of symptomatic infections by more than 90 percent, as does the still-unauthorized one from Novavax. Better still, the available vaccines slash the odds that infected people will spread the virus onward by at least half and likely more. In the rare cases that the virus breaks through, infections are generally milder, shorter, and lower in viral load. As of June 21, the CDC reported just 3,907 hospitalizations among fully vaccinated people and just 750 deaths.

Could the Delta variant (also known as B.1.617.2) change that picture? Data from the U.K. suggest that it is 35 to 60 percent better at spreading than Alpha, which was already 43 to 90 percent more transmissible than the original virus. (It may also be deadlier, but that’s still unclear.) It now causes 26 percent of new infections in the U.S. and will soon cause most of them.

But even against Delta, full vaccination—with a heavy emphasis on full—is effective.  Two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are still 88 percent effective at preventing symptomatic Delta infections, according to a U.K. study, and 96 percent effective at preventing hospitalization. (A single dose, however, is only 33 percent effective at stopping symptomatic infection.) Israel, a highly vaccinated country, is experiencing a small Delta surge, but so far, none of the new cases has been severe. And while about 30 percent of those new cases have been in fully vaccinated people, this statistic reflects, in part, the country’s success at vaccination. Because Israel has fully vaccinated about 85 percent of adults, you would expect many new infections to occur in that very large group. “It does seem like the vaccines are holding their own against the variants,” Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern, told me. “That’s something we can take some comfort from.”

But the coronavirus can cause serious problems without triggering severe infections. Because people can develop long COVID without ending up in the hospital, could Delta still cause long-term symptoms even if vaccines blunt its sting? The anecdotal reports of long-haulers whose symptoms abated after vaccination might suggest otherwise, but “we don’t know enough to say,” Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard, told me.

Another crucial question that “we really need to understand is the nature of transmission from breakthrough cases,” Hanage said. Worryingly, a recent study documented several cases during India’s spring surge in which health-care workers who were fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine were infected by Delta and passed it on.

If other vaccines have similar vulnerabilities, vaccinated people might have to keep wearing masks indoors to avoid slingshotting the virus into unvaccinated communities, especially during periods of high community transmission. “That is unfortunately the direction this is headed,” says Ravindra Gupta, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. Israel has reimposed a mask mandate, while Los Angeles County and the World Health Organization have advised that vaccinated people should wear masks indoors. And such measures make sense because ...

2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.

Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even though they’ll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.

The U.K., where half the population is fully vaccinated, “can be a cautionary tale,” Hanage told me. Since Delta’s ascendancy, the country’s cases have increased sixfold. Long-COVID cases will likely follow. Hospitalizations have almost doubled. That’s not a sign that the vaccines are failing. It is a sign that even highly vaccinated countries host plenty of vulnerable people.

Delta’s presence doesn’t mean that unvaccinated people are doomed. When Alpha came to dominate continental Europe, many countries decided not to loosen their restrictions, and the variant didn’t trigger a huge jump in cases. “We do have agency,” Hodcroft said. “The variants make our lives harder, but they don’t dictate everything.”

In the U.S., most states have already fully reopened. Delta is spreading more quickly in counties with lower vaccination rates, whose immunological vulnerability reflects social vulnerability. Black and Hispanic Americans are among the most likely groups to die of COVID-19 but the least likely to be vaccinated. Immunocompromised people may not benefit from the shots. Children under 12 are still ineligible. And unlike in many other wealthy countries, the pace of vaccinations in America is stalling because of lack of access, uncertainty, and distrust. To date, 15 states, most of which are in the South, have yet to fully vaccinate half their adults. “Watch the South in the summer,” Hanage said. “That’ll give us a flavor of what we’re likely to see in the fall and winter.”

Globally, vaccine inequities are even starker. Of the 3 billion vaccine doses administered worldwide, about 70 percent have gone to just six countries; Delta has already been detected in at least 85. While America worries about the fate of states where around 40 percent of people are fully vaccinated, barely 10 percent of the world’s population has achieved that status, including just 1 percent of Africa’s. The coronavirus is now tearing through southern Africa, South America, and Central and Southeast Asia. The year is only half over, but more people have already been infected and killed by the coronavirus in 2021 than in 2020. And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America.

Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they don’t have access to vaccines; and they’re besieged by Delta. At the start of this year, Vietnam had recorded just 1,500 COVID-19 cases—fewer than many individual American prisons. But it is now facing a huge Delta-induced surge when just 0.19 percent of its people have been fully vaccinated. If even Vietnam, which so steadfastly held the line against COVID-19, is now buckling under the weight of Delta, “it’s a sign that the world may not have that much time,” Dylan Morris, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, told me.

With Delta and other variants spreading so quickly, “my great fear is that in not very long, everyone globally will either have been vaccinated or infected,” Morris said. He didn’t want to pinpoint a time frame, but “I don’t want to bet that we have more than a year,” he said. And richer nations would be wrong to think that the variants will spare them, because ...

3. The longer Principle No. 2 continues, the less likely No. 1 will hold.

Whenever a virus infects a new host, it makes copies of itself, with small genetic differences—mutations—that distinguish the new viruses from their parents. As an epidemic widens, so does the range of mutations, and viruses that carry advantageous ones that allow them to, for example, spread more easily or slip past the immune system to outcompete their standard predecessors. That’s how we got super-transmissible variants like Alpha and Delta. And it’s how we might eventually face variants that can truly infect even vaccinated people.

None of the scientists I talked with knows when that might occur, but they agree that the odds shorten as the pandemic lengthens. “We have to assume that’s going to happen,” Gupta told me. “The more infections are permitted, the more probable immune escape becomes.”

If that does happen, when would we know? This is the first pandemic in history in which scientists are sequencing the genes of a new virus, and tracking its evolution, in real time—that’s why we know about the variants at all. Genomic surveillance can tell which mutations are rising to the fore, and lab experiments can show how these mutations change the virus—that’s how we know which variants are concerning. But even with such work “happening at incredible speed,” Hodcroft told me, “we can’t test every variant that we see.”

Many countries lack sequencing facilities, and those that have them can be easily swamped. “Again and again, we have seen variants pop up in places that are under extraordinary strain because those variants are causing large surges,” Hanage said. Delta ripped its way through India, “but we only understood it when it started causing infections in the U.K.—a country that had plenty of scientists with sequencers and less to do.” So the first sign of a vaccine-beating variant will likely be an uptick in disease. “If vaccinated folks start getting sick and enter hospitals with symptoms, we’ll have a pretty good picture of what’s going on,” Maia Majumder, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, told me.

We’re unlikely to be as vulnerable as we were at the beginning of the pandemic. The vaccines induce a variety of protective antibodies and immune cells, so it’s hard for a variant virus to evade them all. These defenses also vary from person to person, so even if a virus eludes one person’s set, it might be stymied when it jumps into a new host. “I don’t think there’ll suddenly be a variant that pops up and evades everything, and suddenly our vaccines are useless,” Gupta told me. “It’ll be incremental: With every stepwise change in the virus, a chunk of protection is lost in individuals. And people on the edges—the vulnerable who haven’t mounted a full response—will end up bearing the cost.”

If that happens, vaccinated people might need booster shots. Those should be possible: The mRNA vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer should be especially easy to revise against changing viruses. But “if we need boosters, I worry that countries that are able to produce vaccines will do so for their own populations, and the division around the world will become even greater,” Maria van Kerkhove, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the WHO, told me.

The discussion about vaccine-beating variants echoes the early debates about whether SARS-CoV-2 would go pandemic. “We don’t think too well as a society about low-probability events that have far-reaching consequences,” Majumder told me. “We need to prepare for a future where we are doing vaccine rollout again, and we need to figure out how to do that better.” In the meantime, even highly vaccinated nations should continue investing in other measures that can control COVID-19 but have been inadequately used—improved ventilation, widespread rapid tests, smarter contact tracing, better masks, places in which sick people can isolate, and policies like paid sick leave. Such measures will also reduce the spread of the virus among unvaccinated communities, creating fewer opportunities for an immune-escape variant to arise. “I find myself the broken record who always emphasizes all the other tools we have,” van Kerkhove said. “It’s not vaccines only. We’re not using what we have at hand.”

The WHO’s decision to name variants after the Greek alphabet means that at some point, we’ll probably be dealing with an Omega variant. Our decisions now will determine whether that sinister name is accompanied by equally sinister properties, or whether Omega will be just an unremarkable scene during the pandemic’s closing act.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/3-principles-now-define-pandemic/619336/

Edited July 11, 2021 by homersapien

[homersapien 11,373]

Race between vaccines and variants tightens amid worries of Pfizer shot’s effectiveness

By

Erin Cunningham  and Paul Schemm

 July 7, 2021 at 7:04 a.m. EDT

 

The fight against the pandemic in some wealthier nations has now turned into a race between the highly contagious delta variant first identified in India and the rollout of vaccines most scientists say still provide strong protection against infection.

Some studies, however, hint at the nightmare scenario that the seemingly miraculous shots developed last year may not be quite as effective as they were against the original virus strain.

Israel’s Health Ministry this week announced that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — one of the world’s most effective shots — was offering only 64 percent protection against infection and symptomatic illness caused by the delta variant.

The vaccine was still highly effective at preventing severe illness and death, the ministry said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/07/coronavirus-latest-updates/

[tomcat 569]

The “fear” and “denial” factor is fascinating. Some are afraid they will be chipped or some other conspiracy BS. Others are in denial saying it’s only the flu or a bad cold. WTF…if a vaccine could keep you from getting the flu or a bad cold why would you not sign up? Crazy s***…

[AU9377 4,931]

The degree to which some people will go to prove their stubbornness is ridiculous.  Get the damn vaccine. NOBODY is injecting you with some tracking chip.  Anyone that tells you otherwise should not be trusted whatsoever.  My patience with people that insist their own doctors are out to get them instead of trying to help them is close to being exhausted.  Every single person I know in that camp is a die hard Trumpster, yet they haven't considered the fact that he has been vaccinated.  Why any of you would risk your health or not see the importance of ending this pandemic is beyond my understanding.

[Bottomfeeder 244]

Marilyn Bulloch is an associate clinical professor in Auburn University’s Harrison School of Pharmacy and an infectious disease expert.

Quote

 What makes the Delta variant more concerning?

This variant seems to be more contagious, and patients can become very sick pretty quickly. Based on recently released research, including a study in “Lancet” in June, patients infected with the Delta variant are twice as likely to be hospitalized, particularly those with five or more co-morbidities. However, the increased risk of hospitalization appears to be broad reaching across age groups, gender and previous health status.

One other concern is the ability we may have to treat the variant. We have made great strides in developing neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, which overall have been extremely helpful in preventing the progression of mild COVID-19 to severe disease in high-risk patients. Unfortunately, this variant has a particular substitution in the virus’ spike protein that may make the monoclonal antibodies less effective. It is similar to the way bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics.

It sounds like this virus has mutated yet again and there is now a Delta Plus variant. Will we continue to see it mutate and mutate, causing more concern for the unvaccinated?

We will continue to see the virus mutate and change. It is how viruses survive. We have thousands of strains of influenza now and similar amounts with other viruses. There is no way to predict how strong each strain will be. With other viruses, some are more virulent than others.

How can we stop or slow the spread of the Delta variants?

The best thing people can do is to get vaccinated if they are able to. It seems that protection against this strain may not be seen for up to 28 days after getting immunized. The Delta variant is anticipated to become the dominant strain by fall and that is the same time that we enter cold and flu season. It is really important to give your body enough time to mount an immune response. It is also important to continue common-sense infection prevention practices—things like good hand washing or staying away from others if you feel sick. These are things that we recommended long before COVID-19 because we know it reduces transmission of pathogens.

http://ocm.auburn.edu/experts/2021/06/300755-delta-variants.php

As if coronavirus wasn't enough, we have this.

Quote

CDC Warns Doctors About a Mystery Bacterial Outbreak With No Clear Origin
It's unknown how three people in three states caught the often-fatal tropical disease melioidosis, which isn't normally transmissible between humans.

https://gizmodo.com/cdc-warns-doctors-about-a-mystery-bacterial-outbreak-wi-1847210820

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Bottomfeeder