[HN Gopher] Some experts suggest Omicron variant may have evolve...
___________________________________________________________________
Some experts suggest Omicron variant may have evolved in an animal
host
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-12-02 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.statnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.statnews.com)
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Probably a vaccinated human with a breakthrough case, you know,
| exactly like MRSA.
| epgui wrote:
| No, not exactly like MRSA at all.
|
| Be careful, methicillin (and generally speaking, antibiotic)
| resistance are very different, both mechanistically as well as
| evolutionarily, from vaccine immunity evasion.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Please elaborate
| ufo wrote:
| Vaccinated individuals have shorter infections and a lower
| viral load than unvaccinated people, and therefore provide less
| opportunities to develop new variants. More virus = more chance
| for new mutations.
|
| The more likely theory is someone immunocompromised who stayed
| sick for a very long time.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Right but why didn't they die quicker if they were IC and so
| sick?
| ufo wrote:
| The theory is that it would be someone that is
| immunocompromised enough to just hang in there for a long
| time. It's a numbers game. The more people that get
| infected, the bigger the chance a rare event like this will
| happen.
|
| This is one reason why vaccine distribution inequity may
| come back to bite us.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Still doesn't make sense... based on the mutation rate,
| this would have to be someone infected a year or two
| ago...
| solmag wrote:
| Immunocompromised subpopulation is so small (at least in
| my country), especially compared to unvaccinated (abt.
| 30%), that it should be fairly trivial to quarantine
| them, don't really see an issue here if we are
| restricting unvaccinated life based on argument about
| public health.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Incorrect on loads and duration
|
| https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-
| sim...
|
| It makes zero sense for an immunocomprised person to apply
| selective pressure to the virus that results in several
| mutations that perfectly evade the vaccines mechanism of
| action.
| ufo wrote:
| The experts interviewed in the article the OP posted all
| agree that a persistent infection in an imunocompromised
| individual is one of the leading theories. Maybe even more
| plausible than a reverse zoonotic event.
|
| People with a compromised immune system are a good setting
| for evolving new variante of coronavirus. They stay sick
| for a long time (meaning more viral replication and more
| opportunities for mutation) and they apply a weak immune
| response which while not sufficient to wipe out the
| disease, provides selective pressure that rewards immune
| evasion.
|
| There's a common antivaxxer myth that vaccines promote the
| creation of new variants and that we would be better off
| without vaccination. I think it's very important to
| emphasize that is not the case.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Experts had all kinds of wrong opinions on lab leak too
| solmag wrote:
| > a persistent infection in an imunocompromised
| individual is one of the most plausible theories
|
| > People with a compromised immune system are a good
| setting for evolving new variante of coronavirus
|
| If it turns out to be the case, should we have HIV /
| Cancer Patient Passports? After all, these people can be
| a general danger to public health as they can
| demonstrably incubate new dangerous strains of diseases,
| like Omicron.
| ufo wrote:
| Of course not! Please don't suggest that I would say such
| a heartless thing! We're talking about someone who had to
| be sick for months, probably inside a hospital already.
|
| The important thing to do is get everyone vaccinated,
| including in Africa where there is a tremendous shortage
| of vaccines. The more the virus spreads, the more chances
| it has to mutate into new variants. Also, when everyone
| is vaccinated, the elderly and immunocompromised are less
| likely to be exposed to the disease; vaccination should
| be seen first as a public-health policy, not as a means
| for individual protection. Not to mention that, even
| though the vaccination is less effective individually for
| the immunocompromised, they are one of the groups that
| are at most risk from covid and therefore most benefit
| from being vaccinated.
| solmag wrote:
| > vaccination is less effective individually for the
| immunocompromised
|
| > People with a compromised immune system are a good
| setting for evolving new variants of coronavirus
|
| > They stay sick for a long time (meaning more viral
| replication and more opportunities for mutation) and they
| apply a weak immune response which while not sufficient
| to wipe out the disease, provides selective pressure that
| rewards immune evasion.
|
| If what you say is true about immunocompromised people I
| fail to see a public health argument against their
| quarantine and certification via passports. We already
| restrict a much larger and healthier subpopulation (the
| unvaccinated) so restricting this smaller and
| disproportionately more dangerous one does seem quite
| obvious to me, based on public health. And as you say,
| these people are most likely already hospitalized so
| quarantine procedures should be fairly easy to implement
| and follow.
| onychomys wrote:
| You can look at the phylogenetic tree here:
|
| https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global
|
| with Delta being the large green and blue parts at the top, and
| Omicron being a few red dots a little up from the bottom. If you
| trace back, you'll see that its nearest relative is wildtype from
| the spring of 2020. That's pretty weird, and there are really
| only three ways I can think of that it could happen:
|
| 1. human manipulation in a lab using early wildtype samples. This
| seems unlikely, because what would be the point and how did they
| let it escape?
|
| 2. chronic infection in a single immunosuppressed patient. We've
| seen this before (see, for example, this:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2031364 ) and southern
| africa has a lot of immunosuppressed people thanks to HIV.
| Additionally, there are some genetic markers that suggest
| evolution in a human.
|
| 3. spillover of wildtype in spring 2020 to some animal, evolution
| in that population for about 17 months, then spillback last month
| into humans.
|
| I'm with the article, in that I favor 3 even though there's some
| evidence for 2 just because i can't quite understand how the
| omicron patient might have gone all that time without infecting
| anybody else with a proto-omicron version of the virus (which
| would then spread and be picked up on that chart). It's possible,
| I guess, that omicron got increased transmissability in a
| mutation in the recent past, and it could have lived in the
| patient with bad transmissability for a long time previous. And
| since delta is so amazingly transmissable, any proto-omicron
| could have infected a couple of people and then died out
| undetected. But still.
| hcjrmemeld wrote:
| Regarding 1., scientists already did this. This is how we know
| which mutations in Omicron are concerning, and which are not.
|
| They basically tried a wide range of possible mutations and
| tested the effect on vaccine/infection antibodies:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7676316/
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Could it just be that testing was so bad in Africa that we
| never identified this strain as it was spreading in those
| communities until it had some breakthrough mutation that made
| it much more easy to spread?
|
| I think it is telling that it was South Africa, probably one of
| the few SSA nations with the infrastructure to do this testing
| of a representative sample of their population, where this was
| found first.
| dnautics wrote:
| it could be easy to find out. omicron has a very
| characteristic signature in the PCR test (a missing band)
| that I imagine makes it possible to do a retrospective
| analysis if you have good data records.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Doesn't it share that missing band with Alpha though?
| There's not much Alpha around these days, so it's a good
| signal, but if you go back in time that would confound your
| search.
| dnautics wrote:
| I don't know, I wasn't aware of that (I am not an expert,
| just someone that reads slightly-more-scientific-than-
| mainstream-media dispatches, and can understand them
| having done a ton of molecular biology). If you can pont
| me to that I'd love to be enlightened.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Alpha (aka b.1.1.7) causes S-dropout on the PCR test: htt
| ps://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248814v
| ...
|
| Omicron also causes s-dropout:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59460252
| ErikCorry wrote:
| I suspected spillback for Alpha because it had a bunch of
| intermediate mutations that were never seen in other lineages.
| But no animal reservoir was found and I now think the
| immunocompromised single patient explanation is more likely. I
| can see a patient that is known to have spending 6 months in a
| hospital bed not infecting anyone, because they are isolated
| and only seen by medical staff with serious protective clothing
| and masking. Then at some point someone slips up and it
| escapes.
|
| The article speculates that the animal reservoir could be
| rodents. If so, it's not sewer rats, at least not in one of the
| many countries that samples sewage to monitor outbreaks.
| https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mBio.02703-20
|
| By the way the transmissability of delta doesn't pose a hurdle
| for omicron. They are not competing, except in the sense that
| the severity of the delta wave makes people isolate and mask
| up.
| [deleted]
| etiam wrote:
| > 2. chronic infection in a single immunosuppressed patient.
| We've seen this before (see, for example, this:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2031364 ) and
| southern africa has a lot of immunosuppressed people thanks to
| HIV. Additionally, there are some genetic markers that suggest
| evolution in a human.
|
| I speculated about this in another post recently. Might as well
| try putting it up for consideration here again:
|
| If it's in co-infection with HIV, then it isn't only the immune
| status that's abnormal in the physiology, and it might not even
| be the most significant circumstance with respect to what's
| happened here.
|
| They're not particularly closely related, but both
| coronaviruses and retroviruses apparently pack their genome as
| positive-sense, single-stranded RNA, so it doesn't seem wildly
| implausible to me that HIV's modifications to nucleic acid
| metabolism would operate on coronavirus RNA, and HIV is
| infamous for generating plenty of variability for itself. It
| copying sloppily and doing it on purpose, insofar as that can
| be ascribed to an organism like this.
|
| I never got particularly deep into viruses, so there may be
| certainly be known aspects about this I'm missing, but so far I
| haven't been able to find anyone to tell me a compelling reason
| why it wouldn't work.
|
| What are the markers that suggest evolution in a human? I'd be
| interested to see a reference.
| robbiep wrote:
| Except SARS-CoV-2 also has a proof-reading lacking RNA
| Polymerase, and HIV infects CD4+ T cells whilst SARS-CoV-2
| infects cells which express ACE2, which are numerous, but
| doesn't necessarily mean a person with both infections is at
| all likely to have both viruses floating in the same
| cytoplasm. Basically, the mechanism you suggest is not
| necessary because the RNA Pol is just as shit as HIV's
| dhosek wrote:
| Regarding #2, it's likely that Omicron did _not_ emerge in
| Africa but elsewhere. South Africa has the best genetic
| surveillance on the planet which is why they 're picking up
| evidence of new variants more often than other countries.
| abrowne wrote:
| Similarly, the second case in the US was just found in here
| in Minnesota, probably for the same reason (at least compared
| to the rest of the US). MN typically has "more" cases of
| seasonal diseases like flu compared to other states since our
| Dept of Health has been reasonably functional and funded.
| ralusek wrote:
| Tinfoil hat regarding point #1: China is projected to be the
| single country that doesn't get Omicron.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-30/china-bas...
|
| https://time.com/6124937/omicron-china-covid-borders/
|
| https://fortune.com/2021/11/30/omicron-covid-variant-china-e...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-omic...
|
| You get the idea. If the world stage is relative, even if the
| net impact is bad...it's still a positive outcome if you fare
| substantially better than everyone else.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The only people saying China won't get Omicron are the state
| newspapers in China.. of course they're going to get it.
| Especially since they are hosting the Olympics in ~2 months
| and it will certainly be the dominant strain by then.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They've managed to avoid delta to a large part.
| 14 wrote:
| I'm sure they would tell you the truth if they did have
| it and not down play the situation.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| There are lot of ways we'd be easily able to tell if
| covid was actually common in China and being hidden.
| People are still traveling out of China, and they take
| antibody tests.
|
| Mask adherence was already a thing in China before this
| pandemic, so I don't find it hard to believe compliance
| is very high and China doesn't have major problems with
| the pandemic.
| 14 wrote:
| You don't actually think the Chinese border is 100% closed do
| you? It is not. That is like saying the border from the US to
| Mexico is closed no more Mexicans are coming into the US. We
| know that is also not true.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _China is projected to be the single country that doesn 't
| get Omicron_
|
| There is also zero chance that, had Omicron been first
| detected in China, instead of South Africa, that they would
| have done the responsible thing and disclosed it to the
| world.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Omicron is in Hong Kong so likely it is in China too.
| arbitrage wrote:
| no country is not going to see a variant. especially not one
| as big and with as much international traffic & commerce as
| china.
| timr wrote:
| Your options are fine, but nowhere near a comprehensive set.
| You left out an obvious option, for example:
|
| 4. Evolution of a lineage that we didn't detect until now
| because it wasn't common.
|
| We need to stop making the assumption that our surveillance
| systems are comprehensive. They're pretty bad, actually -- and
| they're generally incredibly biased in what they're looking at.
| Even if we were doing unbiased random sampling and sequencing,
| we'd have to do huge volumes of it to reliably detect rare
| strains.
|
| (aside: and if we _did_ do that, we 'd be in non-stop panic
| mode, because we'd be finding a new strain every day.)
| onychomys wrote:
| But we'd have to be missing a huge number of related strains
| to make the phylogeny look like that. The important thing
| isn't that we found a new strain now, it's that the strain is
| most closely related to very early wildtype.
| timr wrote:
| > But we'd have to be missing a huge number of related
| strains to make the phylogeny look like that
|
| Define "huge". There are about ~30 mutations on the spike
| protein from the closest known relative, and there's a
| fairly strong selective pressure against the wild type
| (both from vaccine and natural infection). I think it's
| quite probable that we missed a few months of evolution of
| a strain circulating in a single-digit percentage of
| people.
|
| This is particularly true when you consider that this
| strain has S-gene dropout (Delta does not), and was
| _probably_ dismissed as Beta and never targeted for
| sequencing by most labs. That 's why I meant by my original
| comment that we're biased about what we look at.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Well yeah, many of the places with the worst testing
| coverage are probably close to each other geographically.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Denmark and Iceland sequence every single positive sample.
| Currently 4k per day for Denmark. So I think there's more
| surveillance than you think.
| timr wrote:
| Yeah, some do. But consider that there are at least
| millions of new infections a day, globally...
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Also consider how interconnected the world is that Delta
| spread around the globe in a few months.
| timr wrote:
| Oh, definitely. It's fairly obvious to anyone who
| understands molecular clocks that this strain is already
| widely spread.
|
| We're panicking and closing borders and doing untold
| damage because...we continue to overestimate our ability
| to see what nature is doing in an unbiased way.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| That wouldn't happen, even with our substandard testing,
| unless the strain somehow had very low ability for
| transmission and then only evolved that in this last jump
| which is not likely. Since there are multiple variations from
| the older strain, we'd have seen at least _some_ of the new
| variations along the way.
| erickhill wrote:
| Re: #3, so if you go all the way back to the original strain:
| Potentially animal > human > animal > omicron in humans.
|
| Like, a continuous mixing and mashing feedback loop.
|
| If nothing else, the variants occurring in real time right
| before our very eyes should make the idea of evolution a lot
| easier for some in various communities to finally grasp.
| tw04 wrote:
| >If nothing else, the variants occurring in real time right
| before our very eyes should make the idea of evolution a lot
| easier for some in various communities to finally grasp.
|
| I don't think the issue of evolution has ever been a question
| of people grasping the science. The issue has and continues
| to be the resolution of its conflict with their faith. Some
| have found a way through that mental obstacle course, but
| most have not.
| xaduha wrote:
| Scary number of people, not even of religious sort, think
| that it's perfectly fine to pick and choose which parts of
| scientific achievement they accept and which they don't.
| It's more on the scale of what they like or don't like.
| They might like their smartphones and other gadgets, not so
| much vaccines, fluoride, GMO, all that which isn't
| 'natural' or 'organic'.
|
| So yes, it is a question of people grasping the science,
| not of this specifically, but as a whole. They are not on-
| board, they never fully confront any contradictions that
| they encounter or spew. Logic is not their friend, they are
| not inquisitive, getting to the bottom of something is not
| in their nature. You might think that in general people are
| reasonable, but margins are not that high and informed-ness
| is very surface-level.
| gmac wrote:
| There's certainly some deeply unscientific thinking out
| there ... but I don't think your examples are good ones.
|
| It's reasonable to dislike GMOs (or some subset of them)
| because of who's selling them and why, unrelated to the
| science. It's reasonable to argue against fluoridated
| water even while accepting it's good for dental health,
| because you disagree with mass medication. It's
| reasonable to buy organic food if you know it to be free
| of certain chemicals which, knowing their scientific
| characteristics, you would rather avoid.
| xaduha wrote:
| Problem is that people I'm talking about can't divorce
| not liking something from accepting something as a thing.
| They would look for 'evidence' that it doesn't exist,
| harmful or a product of a conspiracy. They don't use
| scientific method, they are not looking for facts, they
| are looking for confirmation of their preconceived
| notions using biased search engine queries or by hanging
| around in their bubbles. People like that don't have a
| habit of changing their opinions, that's who I'm talking
| about.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > The issue has and continues to be the resolution of its
| conflict with their faith. Some have found a way through
| that mental obstacle course, but most have not.
|
| This baffles me. I believe most Christian
| religions(definitely Catholics and most Protestants)
| embraced the evolution decades ago. So who is debating it
| and why?
| mrkstu wrote:
| Which is pretty much how we end up w/new flu variants out of
| China ever year, correct?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| That's not how it works.
|
| We basically guess what the US flu will be by what is
| "popular" in Asia or Southern Hemisphere, we figure in
| about 6 months or so it'll be in the US. I have no idea how
| Europe or Rest Of World makes flu vaccine guesses.
|
| Guess what though? They do the same. What is "popular" in
| the west MAY be popular in Asia in a few months.
|
| The flu game is constantly a best guess of what others saw
| months ago.
| dnautics wrote:
| We seem to have been increasingly getting bad at that
| guessing game... Thankfully coronavirus put the kaibosh
| on the flu at least in the short term, so if it was the
| flu pangenome making a meta-evolutionary play, we may
| have reset that clock.
| nradov wrote:
| False. The seasonal influenza vaccine creators haven't
| been increasingly getting bad at that guessing game.
| Vaccine effectiveness estimates have fluctuated up and
| down randomly with no clear trend.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-
| estimates...
| dnautics wrote:
| are we looking at the same data? It's hovering around 40%
| with at least two duds, when it used to be in the high
| fifties, even 60%. Plus, this is a table of strictly
| "seasonal" flus. There is no clear definition of what
| constitutes a "seasonal" flu; If I'm not mistaken, "non-
| seasonal" is just a catch-all for flus that weren't part
| of the vaccine package.
| lukevdp wrote:
| The flu is seasonal, so the northern hemisphere looks at
| what flu is in the Southern Hemisphere during their flu
| season and vice versa.
| Toxygene wrote:
| > should make the idea of evolution a lot easier for some in
| various communities to finally grasp
|
| Only if the members of those communities are receptive to re-
| evaluating their ideas and changing their minds.
| decremental wrote:
| A rare quality for members of any community.
| rp1 wrote:
| Evolution has always occurred before our eyes, e.g.
| antibiotic resistant bacteria. I doubt the evolution of Covid
| changes anyone's opinion on evolution.
| true_religion wrote:
| People disbelieve macro evolution. Micro evolution on the
| other hand is hard to disbelieve because the experiments
| about it can be performed in real time.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| I dislike the use of the terms "macro evolution" vs.
| "micro evolution" because they're not really any
| different other than timescale. For some reason, though,
| people who are religious and deny evolution misrepresent
| "macro evolution" as "one animal changing into another"
| as opposed to just "micro evolution over a longer period
| of time".
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I worked with a clinical pharmacist who was an ardent
| young-earth creationist & anti-evolution proponent who
| during his day job spent his time adjusting medications
| and dosages for patients as part of our antimicrobial
| resistance stewardship team. Could never quite make that
| click for him.
| tzs wrote:
| If you were trying to make it click by citing the micro
| evolution you were working with it is not all that
| surprising it didn't work, because in fact trying to use
| micro evolution to prove that macro evolution is possible
| is not a very good approach.
|
| In programming terms, evolution is like tweaking a
| program a few lines at a time, with the requirement that
| the program has to still run and be useful after each
| tweak. You can evolve a C program this way to get a
| faster, or smaller, or more memory efficient, or more
| featured C program, but you are not going to be able to
| evolve a C program into an APL or Haskel or LISP program
| that way.
|
| That macro evolution is possible is quite amazing and
| astounding when you stop and really think about the
| constraints. It is not at all obvious that micro
| evolution implies the possibility of macro evolution.
|
| It's really something that is best approached from the
| opposite direction. We see evidence of macro evolution,
| and then use micro evolution as part of the explanation
| of how this is happening.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Dude literally thought the world was 6,000 years old and
| that Adam lived to be 930 likely because "the oxygen
| content of the air was higher then" -- I wasn't too hung
| up on walking through the science of evolution with him.
| He also told me evolution wasn't possible because of the
| 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, so.. yeah.
| kirse wrote:
| OTOH as engineers who spend a large percentage of life
| pouring blood and sweat into creating things, it's not a
| giant leap of inference to ponder that there may be a
| Creator for the engineering marvel we live in.
|
| I struggle with the speciation aspect of Evolution. Not
| hard to empirically verify in-species adaptations, but
| I'm still waiting to see coronavirus turn into influenza
| (etc)
| op00to wrote:
| I'm waiting for your post to turn into one that makes
| sense. We will both be waiting a very long time.
| dTal wrote:
| >I struggle with the speciation aspect of Evolution.
|
| You might find that pondering the existence of "ring
| species" proves enlightening. It turns out that "species"
| isn't even a well defined concept when you look closely
| enough.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
|
| (Also, you needn't capitalize "evolution". It's not a god
| :))
| cogman10 wrote:
| Where do you think covid came from in the first place?
|
| Covid won't change into the flu, that's like assuming a
| chicken might evolve into it's ancestors species or
| humans will evolve into apes. Evolution goes forward, not
| (or rarely) backwards.
|
| It's a completely new species that, up until 2019, did
| not exist in the human population.
|
| This sort of evolution happens frequently when people are
| in close contact with animals. Hence the reason European
| disease wiped out native populations but not the reverse.
| Also, a direct example of human evolution.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _If nothing else, the variants occurring in real time right
| before our very eyes should make the idea of evolution a lot
| easier for some in various communities to finally grasp._
|
| I've heard people say that hurricanes and natural disasters
| were God punishing us, I can easily see the same logic
| applied to COVID. No need to rely on science for answers when
| a vengeful god suffices.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Never underestimate a human's mental gymnastic ability. This
| is where evolution deniers draw a distinction between "micro"
| and "macro" evolution, arguing that "of course micro
| evolution happens, you can see it!" and "of course macro
| evolution doesn't happen, you can't see it!"
| vaxman2 wrote:
| Cause tis is getting flagged here is the Pfizer report that was
| supposed to be blocked from public eye for the next 50 years:
|
| Pfizer's own adverse reaction data:
|
| https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarke...
| solmag wrote:
| Ending a virus that we have no sterilizing vaccines for and which
| might have an animal reservoir; don't merely need vaccine
| mandates but VaaS mandates.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If the current state of Covid is not acceptable and it is
| determined that the disease needs to be eradicated, these
| vaccines aren't enough. We will have to start elimination of
| reservoir animal colonies near human civilization at a global
| scale. Go into bat habitats with flamethrowers. The vaccines
| are too leaky and another mutation in a animal population and
| we are back where we started.
|
| Although, if it was a lab leak and we didn't have a animal
| population to worry about we could save a lot of animals. We
| could also accept that it's now endemic.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's a bit weird to jump to "flamethrowers in the jungle"
| instead of "second-generation vaccines", isn't it?
|
| It's definitely able to get into animals. That's been known
| since nearly the beginning; quite a few zoos lost animals to
| it. Lab leak or not doesn't really change that calculus at
| all.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I mean, we sorta went right to "lock down the entire
| economy" so I figure that's the next logical step. I
| personally feel both measures are a bit of a overeaction.
| Preparing for a endemic seasonal disease like the flu is
| more sensible to me, with a focus on early detection and
| treatment.
| eddie_gibbon wrote:
| What is VAAS? Google does not up anything related.
| solmag wrote:
| Vaccine-As-A-Service, every 5-6 months a booster shot.
| pc86 wrote:
| To my knowledge no booster is approved for use within 6
| months of another shot, and 6 months is overkill unless
| you're extremely high risk, e.g. in the "still wiping down
| door dash deliveries with bleach wipes" kind of high risk.
| nopeNopeNooope wrote:
| It's nice that you started with "To my knowledge", it's
| kind of like "I'm not racist, but let me tell you some
| bullshit racism".
|
| The CDC recommends everyone over 18 get a booster after 6
| months, and the main reason is that the infectivity of
| vaccinated individuals drops drastically after a booster.
| So while 60% of "fully vaccinated" folks might go on to
| infect others after exposure to the virus, that number
| drops to ~10% of folks after a booster.
|
| Since biology isn't ever a 100% effective kind of thing,
| you eradicate disease by implementing a bunch of only
| slightly effective interventions that lay-people think
| are bullshit, but if you combine a lot of slightly
| effective things, you end up with an effective enough
| response to break the cycle of infectivity.
| solmag wrote:
| > To my knowledge no booster is approved for use within 6
| months of another shot
|
| Government recommends booster after five to six months in
| my country. To clarify, they do not yet recommend
| boosters to the end of time, just a booster after the
| second.
|
| > 6 months is overkill unless you're extremely high risk
|
| It is a general recommendation here.
| cjcole wrote:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/uk-to-offer-booster-
| sho...
|
| Three months, available to all adults.
|
| "All adults in the United Kingdom will be able to get
| their booster Covid-19 vaccine doses three months after
| their second shot, the government indicated on Monday, in
| a dramatic acceleration of the country's inoculation
| drive that comes amid fears over the Omicron variant."
| mikeyouse wrote:
| They're recommending mRNA boosters 2 months after the J&J
| or AZ shots, and the CDC recommendation is now 6 months
| for everyone who got the 2-dose mRNA.
| dasudasu wrote:
| France is 5 months mandatory. UK is 3 months
| availability.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Lowercase a's would probably make that acronym more
| apparent on this forum I think.
| hncurious wrote:
| UK is now recommending boosters be applied just 3 months after
| vaccination. If that's the trend, Vaccine as a Service has a
| bright future.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/29/covid-booster-...
| eganist wrote:
| > which might have an animal reservoir
|
| cats, minks, deer, in addition to the usual ones like bats.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Not just cats, all felines.[0]
|
| [0]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/tiger-
| cor...
| [deleted]
| h2odragon wrote:
| has anyone, i wonder, done studies of the covid waves in
| countries and counties vs animal activity in those areas? doesn't
| an animal transmission path and wild reserve have severe
| implications for lots of the studies we've already done on the
| effectiveness of our countermeasures?
|
| It was known _early_ that other mammals got COVID; the attitude
| of "there is only the Gospel and all else is Misinformation" has
| prevented discussion and likely prevented studies on it.
| [deleted]
| solmag wrote:
| One should be able to still look at what South & East Asian
| states have done, I don't think Vietnam or South Korea have
| this problem of highly politicized scientific community. Don't
| know if they have confirmed animal reservoir though.
| solmag wrote:
| I forgot (because I assume the original was a lab leak) that
| China's entire (believe it or not) story is that it was a bat
| leak instead.
|
| So .. some government actions do not seem justified if you
| believe it came from animal reservoir.
| bluGill wrote:
| We don't know, and probably never can know where it came
| from. If it was a lab leak they have covered their tracks
| enough that we cannot be sure. If it wasn't - then it is
| even harder to figure out where it came from.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > It was known early that other mammals got COVID; the attitude
| of "there is only the Gospel and all else is Misinformation"
| has prevented discussion and likely prevented studies on it.
|
| That is a giant strawman. I'm confused why you think that
| mainstream virologists are not deeply interested in discussing,
| researching and tracking animal reservoirs for Covid. One minor
| example I'm familiar with that got widespread coverage in both
| the scientific community and the public at large in
| Pennsylvania: https://www.oleantimesherald.com/news/penn-state-
| researchers...
| epgui wrote:
| I'm a biochemist, and I approve of this comment.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| So we will get multiple competing strains that mutate quicker
| than we can develop the vaccine, with us trying to predict which
| strain will be dominant. Flue Vaccine is effectiveness estimated
| to be around 30% because of this.
|
| Dr Christina Parks testimony for Michigan HB4471, explains this
| effect. https://youtu.be/8DOOZpGA_VI
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Parks is a quack who lies a lot in public. I particularly like
| the end of your video where she goes all in on vaccines causing
| autism.
| wk_end wrote:
| Unrelated question, and not to pick on you if English isn't
| your first language - I'm always impressed by people who speak
| any multiple languages with any competency:
|
| I've seen people misspelling flu as "flue" a lot over the
| course of this pandemic. I thought maybe that it was a British
| spelling, or that it was the word in German or French or
| Russian or something and foreign language speakers were
| mistakenly using the same word in English based on the
| similarity, but I can't find a language where that's the case.
| What's up with that?
| asquabventured wrote:
| InFLUEnza and the shortened version is pronounced like "blue"
| in English? Seems reasonable for a non-native speaker to
| infer it should be spelled with an e at the end.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm not the person you're replying to but I've also been
| wondering the same. The best I can come up with is that
| "flue" is an actual word (like a chimney flue) and
| autocorrect doesn't alert people to the error. Kind of like
| there, their, and they're.
|
| In writing this comment though I've learned that my iPhone
| autocorrects flue to glue. Even when following the word
| chimney. So perhaps my pet theory is totally wrong.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Flu is perculiar because it reassorts - it's genome is in 8?
| pieces, which can interchange with other similar flu viruses
| within an infected cell. So a coinfection with A and B flu
| strains may result in C strain mixed and matched from A and B.
| Very hard to immunize against.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Could sars-cov2 not do the same thing?
| asow92 wrote:
| If this is true then we may never fully eradicate covid. Another
| reverse zoological event may be right around the corner next
| season.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Deer, dogs, bats, cats.. the list goes on and on.
| ciapedo wrote:
| Fauci funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.
|
| NIH admits to this:
|
| https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880/p...
|
| Fauci needs to be arrested immediately and executed.
| jdauriemma wrote:
| Issues like this highlight the importance of the emerging One
| Health (https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/index.html) approach to
| tackling human, animal, and environmental health.
| Transdisciplinary collaboration across multiple health modalities
| is the only complete way to tackle large-scale health issues.
| roody15 wrote:
| So far Omicron has been shown to be extremely mild with only some
| minor symptoms. Isn't this the ideal situation? Finally a variant
| that is less lethal and may help provide immunity against more
| lethal variants.
|
| Just missing the "now is the time to panic" vibe being pushed by
| many news outlets.
| solmag wrote:
| The governments who enact the restrictions and the majority who
| support them are not acting entirely on arguments based on
| health. For example, origin of COVID is animal reservoir (bats)
| which makes a bunch of the restrictions illogical (they are
| predicated on sterilizing immunity / eradicating it entirely -
| also known as zero covid).
|
| So, it is not cut and dry case that you can present a health
| policy based on health, like you are making now. You probably
| need some kind of Girardian scapegoat or a political argument
| to shock the public out of it. I don't think the latter is
| coming because majority supports and sees the restrictions as
| positive.
| pault wrote:
| Animal origin theory is far from settled, and there is
| mounting evidence that the lab leak theory was squashed early
| on for political reasons. This book that came out recently
| and it's extremely compelling. I was fully in the "lab link
| is conspiracy theory" camp until I read it.
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Viral-Search-COVID-19-Matt-
| Ridley/dp/0...
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| In fact it hasn't been shown to be extremely mild. Much too
| early to tell.
|
| There are strong suggestions that it evades immunity from prior
| infection - presumably the reverse would also be true.
|
| Early days yet as we wait for the data to come in, but indeed
| Now may well be the time to panic!
| roody15 wrote:
| "In fact it hasn't been shown to extremely mild".
|
| Where have you heard this? I agree much too early to know
| from sure but all initial reporting has this variant shown to
| be quite mild.
| 13415 wrote:
| GP said it hasn't been shown to be extremely mild, not that
| it has been shown not to be extremely mild. It's too early
| to tell since the first known cases were skewed towards
| young people.
| disambiguation wrote:
| I'm cautiously hopeful about this too, it would be ideal for a
| "high transmission yet benign" variant to take over.
| Effectively joining the common cold class of viruses.
|
| But like everything else this pandemic, we have to wait and
| see. Hopefully we get the good news before the end of the year.
| jarenmf wrote:
| It's still too early to say it's mild.
| drallison wrote:
| David Quammen's book Spillover is informative about the role of
| animal infections and the pandemic.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-02 23:04 UTC)