[HN Gopher] Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the varian...
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Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
Author : mrfusion
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-03-13 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.harvard.edu)
| yaledioma wrote:
| So also the digitalizzation and 4th industrial revolution will
| end... Let's hope to don't see the army on the street before 2026
| weakfish wrote:
| Why the FUD?
| williesleg wrote:
| Biden ended the pandemic. And the good news is Facebook has
| pictures of all of us in masks and without masks.
| superkuh wrote:
| This is a hopeful but possible take. But the 501Y.V2 (B.1.351)
| and 501Y.V3 (P1) lineages have the mutation within the conserved
| region for coronaviruses near the spike protein cleavage site.
| These show massively (1000x) decreased monoclonal antibody
| binding for original genetic sequence designs. It's better for
| the mRNA vaccine produced human-body-made antibodies which show
| only 5-10x reduction in binding.
|
| But antibody binding isn't the full story and there may be T-cell
| stuff helping too. The data seems to indicate updated spike
| protein designs will be needed but if there's other stuff going
| on we don't know about old spike vaccines could still work. I
| can't say it will definitely _help_ because the vaccine rollout
| is so slow and air travel is so fast that this negative pressure
| will probably provoke more variants as long as host numbers
| remain high.
|
| ref: "Antibody Resistance of SARS-CoV-2 Variants B.1.351 and
| B.1.1.7" [pdf]
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03398-2_reference...
| https://i.imgur.com/8co1IoL.jpg "SARS-CoV-2 VoC B.1.1.7 and
| B.1.351 neutralization evasion" table.
|
| https://covariants.org/variants/S.501Y.V2
| https://covariants.org/variants/S.501Y.V3
| hanklazard wrote:
| The monoclonal data is less concerning since the human antibody
| response is polyclonal. It's not surprising that this virus can
| escape from a single targeted antibody and if I were in pharm,
| this is why I wouldn't spend billions on a mAb drug. I agree
| that the decreased convalescent plasma effectiveness is not
| ideal but I doubt this virus will be able to fully escape the
| mRNA vaccines on a population level.
|
| Polyclonal antibodies against spike + t-cells + herd immunity
| _should_ be enough to quell this pandemic. At least I hope so.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Thank you for the references!
| randomsearch wrote:
| How does a 5x reduction in binding actually impact infection?
| cybert00th wrote:
| >Galit Alter, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and
| the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, said the fast-
| spreading U.K. variant seems able to evade some vaccine
| protection, and the South African variant appears able to skirt
| even more. Despite that, she said, none have completely escaped
| the body's post-vaccination immune responses.
|
| Weak on facts and strong on persuasive language:
|
| >seems able to evade
|
| Either they can evade or they can't, there's no seeming to about
| it!
|
| >appears able to skirt even more
|
| Either it can skirt around or it can't, there's no appearing
| about it!
|
| And anyway, herd immunity to these kinds of viruses comes from
| full-blown exposure - not hiding behind a vaccine.
|
| After all is said and done, this is all about money and power - a
| great pile of public money and the opportunity to concentrate the
| power to run countries in the hands of a few for as long as
| possible.
|
| And then too, the opportunity for academicians to puff their CVs
| and to ensure their place in the sun of scholarly tenure and
| advancement.
|
| I rest my m'lud.
| throwaway72h9a wrote:
| Yeah I make it a point to never trust the opinion of "experts"
| on such matters which can potentially create panic in society.
| It's just far easier to sound assuring than tell the naked
| truth as it is.
|
| Most of these experts earlier said that the UK variant was
| nothing to worry about. Now we know it not only spreads faster
| but is also much deadlier. Same thing might happen here.
| h3cate wrote:
| Here in the UK we've already been warned that the new
| Brazilian variant is unlikely to be stopped by vaccines. It's
| surprising to see this story pop up all of a sudden.
| [deleted]
| credit_guy wrote:
| What I don't understand is this: with tens of millions of people
| already vaccinated, why aren't we seeing a huge drive to collect
| plasma from vaccinated people with high level of antibodies? In
| the early days of the pandemic (about 1 year ago), I remember
| China sent a large amount of plasma to Italy.
|
| Why can't the US do the same now? The US is sitting on millions
| of AstraZeneca vaccines (that are not even approvad by the FDA),
| and doesn't want to share. How about sending plasma?
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| Maybe because it's not profitable?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Here the billboards are advertising $700 for plasma donation.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Because it's a lot easier to manufacture and distribute the
| vaccines
| bsaul wrote:
| i'm very surprised to see remdesivir mentionned in this article
| at all... Isn't this drug officialy not working at all against
| covid-19 , and as such should be banned because of perfusion
| side-effects ? (in addition to the fact that it seems to be known
| to increase the amount of virus genetic mutations in people
| treated with it)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Here in the Czech Republic, doctors in Brno are trying a
| combination of remdesivir and convalescent plasma in
| oncological Covid patients. They say that the combo has, so
| far, worked much better than either of the components in
| isolation. Out of the small cohort, they lost no one so far.
|
| Source in Czech:
| https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/jihomoravskykraj/3278822-brnen...
| mfkp wrote:
| That's the treatment that I got back in September in the US.
| I think they stopped using Remdesivir since then because it
| didn't correlate with any positive outcome. It also was
| destroying my liver, so they had to cut off the treatment
| halfway through.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2021/01/31/remdesivir.
| ..
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Maybe the total balance of results is better for
| immunosuppressed oncologic patients.
|
| Or maybe it is just a form of medical nationalism, given
| that the leader of the Remdesivir scientific team, Tomas
| Cihlar, is a Czech scientist.
|
| We had some critical patients improve and heal on
| remdesivir, though. I wonder how big of a role genetic
| diversity plays. There are many uncertain suspicions that
| Covid hits some people harder than others based not just on
| lifestyle, but things such as blood groups.
|
| Research into that will be a good PhD material for years to
| come.
| nl wrote:
| One thing I've learnt from the whole C19 treatment debacle is
| to never ever trust any single study.
|
| Unlike computer science where if you test something and it
| works once you and then you expect it to work for everyone,
| in medical research if you see an effect in one treatment
| study you probably won't see the same effect elsewhere.
|
| For treatments (unlike controlled vaccine studies) the
| cohorts are too small and there are too many other variables.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Absolutely. The study may even be valid in certain
| conditions, but still fail to replicate elsewhere.
|
| People differ. Healthcare systems differ. Too many small
| details, too small to document, differ.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I'm as skeptical of your last parenthetical as you should be
| about remdesivir's overall effectiveness. In any case, the
| effects are too small to matter.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Isn't remdesivir being used only in cases of viral pneumonia on
| ICU patients?
| thepangolino wrote:
| These kind of pandemic tend to end themselves after about 20-30
| months. We're about half way there anyway.
| 2-tpg wrote:
| You are correct. The pandemic may end after about 20-30 months,
| but this novel coronavirus will stick around. It is going to be
| a community virus, such as the Spanish flu turned into seasonal
| influenza. People pushed back hard against the experts when
| they started talking about preparing for herd immunity and 70%+
| infected. So, this messaging has become more careful.
|
| A few months later the debate will turn to this being leaky
| vaccines (vaccinated still shed virus, but may not get really
| sick). Officially, this is also: We just don't know, we are
| monitoring it. But all the monkeys showed shedding. Trial
| participants showed shedding. This is a leaky vaccine. What
| happened to the targeted disease, when we used a leaky vaccine
| in life stock can be read here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease
|
| Edit: I'd like a single expert predicting that our current
| vaccines will eradicate novel coronavirus. That would prove the
| downvoted post wrong. You'll find many experts agreeing that
| novel coronavirus is going to mutate and live among humans for
| a long long time after the crisis is over. Facts, people.
| zamfi wrote:
| > A few months later the debate will turn to this being leaky
| vaccines
|
| Made a bit more complicated by the fact that not all vaccines
| have the same properties here...somehow seems the mRNA
| vaccines do better at preventing shedding than the
| adenovirus-based ones [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2024671
| 1996 wrote:
| I can't believe you are getting downvoted!
|
| This is a real risk!
|
| Relevant quote:
|
| > Under normal conditions, highly virulent strains of the
| virus are not selected. A highly virulent strain would kill
| the host before the virus would have an opportunity to
| transmit to other potential hosts and replicate. Thus, less
| virulent strains are selected. These strains are virulent
| enough to induce symptoms but not enough to kill the host,
| allowing further transmission. However, the leaky vaccine
| changes this evolutionary pressure and permits the evolution
| of highly virulent strains.[12] The vaccine's inability to
| prevent infection and transmission allows the spread of
| highly virulent strains among vaccinated chickens. The
| fitness of the more virulent strains are increased by the
| vaccine.
|
| (...)
|
| > Highly virulent strains have been selected to the point
| that any chicken that is unvaccinated will die if infected.
| Other leaky vaccines are commonly used in agriculture. One
| vaccine in particular is the vaccine for avian influenza.
| Leaky vaccine use for avian influenza can select for virulent
| strains which could potentially be transmitted to humans.[13]
| alkonaut wrote:
| > This is a real risk!
|
| I never heard this discussed as a big "risk". As far as I
| know this was always more or less known to be the endgame
| and not even a dangerous outcome but the "good" scenario.
|
| Once it's an established coronavirus, it can be like the
| other known human coronaviruses we already have. The reason
| you don't die from OC43 at age 75 now is because you
| probably cought it a few times before that. It's not
| necessarily because OC43 doesn't have a high IFR at high
| ages. We don't know that because we don't have a large
| sample of it. For all we know, one or more of the existing
| HCOVs may have been quite a deadly disease back when it
| entered the population.
|
| We aren't going to exterminate SARS-COV2. Especially
| obvious since it's not limited to humans (present in mink,
| cats, primates, ...). And that's not going to be a big
| problem.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's the first time we have mRNA vaccines available, which
| makes it much easier to update / mix different variations of
| the virus than earlier technologies. The mass production is
| still not optimized, but at least the incentives are huge at
| this point.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Citation needed.
| 2-tpg wrote:
| Maybe China can help with a cite. They did have a 5-6 month
| head start and first encountered: brain-blood barrier pass,
| blood cloths and brain/lung aneurisms, reinfection, patient
| 0, airborne COVID, effect of mask wearing, pets getting
| infected, and more.
|
| Too bad they don't allow the WHO full access to investigate,
| nor share critical information with the rest of the world,
| now suffering thousands of deaths. Most likely is a lab leak
| accident (Israel, UK, and US all said as much!). But
| unfortunately, the "China Virus" has become a political
| issue, and you won't find cites in the popular media anymore.
| Just articles about xenophobic conspiracy theories, and to
| listen to health experts when they tell you masks are not
| protective, go eat at China Town to show your support, don't
| worry about losing weight, and that vitamin D deficiency is a
| hoax.
| hannob wrote:
| Which other pandemic do you think is even remotely comparable
| to Covid-19? (All pandemics with a comparable transmission rate
| happened in times that simply aren't comparable to the modern
| world in terms of mobility, which obviously affects the way
| this goes.)
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| COVID is different because it is occurring against a backdrop
| of extremely aged and obese populations, in a year (2020)
| which followed a weak flu season (2019), and in an election
| year in the USA (2020) where all health decision were heavily
| politicised.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v.
| ..
|
| "In Sweden, the observed increase in all-cause mortality
| during Covid-19 was partly due to a lower than expected
| mortality preceding the epidemic and the observed excess
| mortality, was followed by a lower than expected mortality
| after the first Covid-19 wave. This may suggest mortality
| displacement."
|
| Sweden had about the same mortality spike in 2009 from Swine
| flu: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-
| monthly-...
| spicybright wrote:
| How?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| If we're lucky the virus mutates into a very transmissible
| but not very symptomatic or damaging to humans variant. It's
| speculated that's how the 1918 flu pandemic eventually ended.
| simonh wrote:
| That's true, but before that happened it appears to have
| mutated into a considerably more virulent and deadly form
| that dominated in the second wave. COVID probably would
| eventually burn itself out into a less lethal form, but
| there's no telling how long or rocky the road to that could
| be.
| stormbrew wrote:
| The last pandemic with a death toll anything like (actually
| much worse than) COVID-19 is the still-ongoing HIV pandemic.
| It's entering its 40th _year_.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's crazy to think about how HIV has killed some ~32 million
| people, and yet we rarely hear about it anymore. COVID
| probably won't even hit 4 million deaths (barring some much
| deadlier variant that we can't easily produce a new vaccine
| for).
| monoideism wrote:
| Yeah, but that's > 3 million over 12 months vs 32 million
| over 40 years, the majority before 2010.
|
| AIDS was a huge deal back when there was no treatment for
| it.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Right, I don't mean to downplay the severity of COVID at
| all. It's just interesting that we generally don't hear a
| lot about HIV/AIDS anymore, even though there were still
| 690,000 deaths associated with it in 2019.
|
| I also realize that probably depends largely on where you
| live.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 1 million per year... endemic versus epidemic
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