Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Welp.

 

9) TO BE CLEAR—Still take the vaccine. It should not be affected too much. Maybe a few % drop in efficacy — but 80-95% is still better than 0% protection if you don’t take it!

 

Is there a "patch" for the vaccine?

 

That guy fearmongers a lot. Although he covered the key points later down in the thread

There's a *lot* of steps between "in a highly controlled lab setting, this one variant seemed to escape one part of the immune system in some number of patients" and "this variant of the virus negates immunity worldwide and extends the pandemic."

 

We are a *long* way from needing one. But if it gets to that point, the mRNA vaccine can be patched very easily without needing to go through trials again.

 

Here’s the original paper that South African variant story is talking about. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in these kinds if things:

SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

some highlights:

this is not the first variant to be exhibiting some of these mutations, suggesting a selection advantage as they’re being independently arrived at

neutralizing antibodies are only one part of the immune response. Non-neutralizing antibodies bind to the virus as a signal for other parts of the immune system to come clean it up, and they still recognize this variant.

the authors come across as more “hey this could lower the effectiveness of vaccines” more than “fuck the vaccines won’t work at all now,” but they indicate several times that this variant could eventually make impotent the commercial monoclonal antibody treatments we are using now

 

Our cases here rose dramatically over the weekend. Nearly 10,000 reported on Saturday in Virginia, something like 4,000 more than the previous daily high. Whether that was a backlog being updated, I don't know, but I also know our positivity rate has gone from 16.8 percent to 13.9 in the same period of time, so I don't know what to make of any of this shit.

 

Do to think they are temp testing people before they give the vaccine?

My guess it has something to do with people coming clean about having it before they are vaccinated.

 

Several interesting pieces of reading on mutations and how they interact with immunity:

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/19/memory-b-cells-infection-and-vaccination (it's really important to start with this one, it gives good context on what it means when a mutation appears to escape antibody detection in a lab environment)

Impact of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 Spike variant on neutralisation potency of sera from individuals vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine BNT162b2

Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 pseudovirus by BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited human sera

Estimates of severity and transmissibility of novel South Africa SARS-CoV-2 variant 501Y.V2


This doesn't look like an "oh crap, the pandemic never ends now" problem. But it could be an "post-pandemic endemeic COVID is a little more dangerous than it would be if we prevented this" problem, so it's very real and it's something scientists have to be working on actively.

All through the summer, various drugs showed promise interacting with COVID in a laboratory setting, but turned out to have no effect in live testing. The same thing is likely to happen with variants escaping immunity. The immune system is complicated and multi-faceted, appearing to dodge one part of it in a lab setting does not mean we're back to square one and everyone's getting reinfected.

I think it's interesting to note the last one, talking about the South African variant. It's been reported that based on growing prevalence the variant might be up to 50% more transmissible (R0) than most common variants because of how prevalent that it is, and that it might have a 20% reinfection success rate. But it can't be both of those things. That's the maximum possibility for both explanations, but the explanations can't both be 100% true. The more one is true, the less the other one is. It's like if we both put money into a pot and now it has $20 in it. I could have put up to $20 in it, you could have put up to $20 in it, but we couldn't have both put $20 in it or there would be $40 in it.

 

Nothing much to read into this - yet. The key is for the decline over a span of many weeks.

Until then, assume that nothing has improved, wear a mask, space out, wash your hands, etc. ...