Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[LinekersLegs]

 

[Tubey]

We will get a reprieve in the Spring/Summer months mate. The vaccine is super news, but essentially we are treating Covid from 6 months ago. The U.K. and SA variants have evolved, the SA variant in particular is Super Covid. The evolution has seen things that were low risk now have become lower to high risk.

Governments are keeping the population calm, they are trading of the good news of the vaccine politically at the moment. But look the evidence is there. If you want to look.

The U.K. variant spread like wildfire through Europe, it’s highly transmissible as the amino acids evolved to bind to cells better, replicate more and have a greater viral load, what we have seen is cases all across Europe surge and stubbornly refuse to come down - with previous measures that worked. The death toll average has increased massively.

The SA variant is even worse, it’s evolved more quickly then even the U.K. variant and has punched holes in our vaccines so far. It’s massively self Rep,I sting and highly transmissible again we are seeing changes in the amino acids and spike protein.

If you look around you are aware you will how worried governments are - during all this we never restricted the borders, it’s now become standard, the whole of Europe is in lockdown, the U.K. Government have had outbreaks of it already and essentially I believe the army were going to door testing for it and shutting down communities, if the SA variant becomes dominant in a country it’s a huge body blow to our defence this year. The U.K. variant has already shut down Europe for the winter.

The vaccines are great and will offer some protection, however they were not designed for the variant, like I said we are treating Covid of 6 months ago. Of course we will see a booster I suspect in the Autumn to try and nail the SA variant.

But there is no point now drinking the Kool aide and not seeing it and to a lesser extent the U.K. variant as serious problems, despite our advancement with the vaccines.

The vaccine has been in operation against the Kent variant and there's already a shed load of evidence that it's KO'd hospital admissions and deaths for it.

There's no evidence whatsoever the SA variant evades the vaccines to the point it negates the immunogenic response.

Beta coronavirus variant: What is the risk?

There are fears that this version of coronavirus, first identified in South Africa, is

www.bbc.com

They are still, ultimately, COVID. Vaccine efficacy can and will be compromised, which is why we need to update them, but there's no evidence whatsoever of any strain capable of making the vaccines useless or even semi-effective at preventing death and severe illness. This isn't 'drinking the Kool Aid', its all borne out by real world evidence so far.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[Tubey]

Thanks - again, proves my point. And ultimately, that's the goal - not to stop it existing, but to stop it killing.

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

COVID research: a year of scientific milestones

Nature waded through the literature on the coronavirus — and summarized key papers as they appeared.

www.nature.com

 

[Neiler]

The pattern has been greater transmissibility with variants, not lethality. You're right that something new like COVID in a human host will play tricks, but ultimately over time viruses become less lethal, not more, until they hit a 'sweet spot'. For example, the 1918 Spanish Flu was a flu variant that was clearly more transmissable, but was more lethal mostly because of the dire social conditions of the first world war, not because the strain itself was significantly more deadly.

The SA variant simply hits efficacy; there's no evidence is hinders the immunogenic response for severe disease. It possibly creates more mild symptoms as it 'unlocks the door' quicker to the body with its delivery mechanism, but the vaccine still creates an immune response that ultimately deals with it.

And that's what people continue to miss - we can't eradicate COVID. If it infects, spreads but does little damage, then fine - we deal with that as we get it. The problem pre-vaccine was we had no bodily defence to it due to it being completely new to us; the vaccine takes that weakness away. We have a baseline response to what it can do to us.

It’s impossible to predict mate. Viruses by nature don’t want to kill, they want to replicate and thrive. But in the evolution of a virus on a virgin population and vice versa it’s an unfortunate side effect. Virus by nature don’t become less lethal, they can evolve benignly become but also become more sinister or cunning to survive. Covid itself is a relation of a flu strain. A number of things happen, a virus lethality can die out in generations. For example kids today are exposed to the virus, because it doesn’t impact their immune system, when they come to adult hood their system is used use€to the virus and developed protection. Baby’s born today won’t have an issue with Covid. Then we evolve. Vaccines are essentially pumping technology into ourselves to combat the virus, the virus will evolve and we will have to update the soft ware. Then you are into groups if we do that for 5he majority of the population we are reducing hosts for the virus @nd becomes less viral in the community. But Covid is going to be problematic for our generation until we all die off essentially and the next generation have decent immune exposure. Like Spanish flu.

Without doubt the vaccine offers protection, you’d have it rather then not, a programmed immune response that likely needs a software update already, but the vaccine was developed for Covid 6 months ago, not with these varients in mind, the SA strain in particular punches holes in that level of protection more then Covid 6 months ago. Look there is loads of studies out there on SA variant and impact on vaccines, you can take your own conclusion, but dismissing the varients as a risk and saying don’t panic we have a vaccine is to be frank not seeing in what happening and what going on around you.

You keep using immunogenic response that’s impossible to work out even with normal Covid at the moment, never mind the variants, all we have is very little date at this early stage to even begin to have confidence in a finite immunogenic response.

 

[Neiler]

Thanks - again, proves my point. And ultimately, that's the goal - not to stop it existing, but to stop it killing.

It doesn’t really, it says it offers a measure of protection of some immune response - the study doesn’t suggest that if you get the SA varient you won’t get seriously ill and it definitely won’t kill you. That’s presumption.

It’s better to have the vaccine then not of course.

 

[Tubey]

It doesn’t really, it says offers a measure of protection - the study doesn’t suggest that if you get the SA varient you won’t get seriously ill and definitely won’t kill you.

“In more than 90% of cases, the antibodies that people are generating after the second dose are up at the sort of level that neutralises the virus and which we would expect to protect them from infection,” said James. “We’re pretty confident that they’ll be protected from infection by the South African strain and the Kent strain, as well as the [original] strain of the virus."

“The findings add to the growing confidence that the current vaccines will have a large impact on the course of the pandemic, whether by completely protecting from or markedly ameliorating disease."

 

[Neiler]

“In more than 90% of cases, the antibodies that people are generating after the second dose are up at the sort of level that neutralises the virus and which we would expect to protect them from infection,” said James. “We’re pretty confident that they’ll be protected from infection by the South African strain and the Kent strain, as well as the [original] strain of the virus."

“The findings add to the growing confidence that the current vaccines will have a large impact on the course of the pandemic, whether by completely protecting from or markedly ameliorating disease."

“ The study, which has not yet been reviewed by other scientists, found that people’s antibodies were moderately effective against the original virus after their first dose of vaccine, less effective against the Kent variant, and were unable to neutralise the South African variant”

 

[Tubey]

“ The study, which has not yet been reviewed by other scientists, found that people’s antibodies were moderately effective against the original virus after their first dose of vaccine, less effective against the Kent variant, and were unable to neutralise the South African variant”

That's efficacy in terms of stopping infection. The very next paragraph details the T-cell response which is strong.

As said, variants will evade vaccine efficacy, but there's no evidence it evades the immunogenic response.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[Neiler]

That's efficacy in terms of stopping infection. The very next paragraph details the T-cell response which is strong.

As said, variants will evade vaccine efficacy, but there's no evidence it evades the immunogenic response.

It’s not efficacy, it’s a measure of the antibody response which is poor. It does show a T-Cell response, but it always should after a vaccines T-Cells are memory protective immune cells, if you inject yourself with an MRNA there is always going to be a T-Cell response. To be honest the article is vague and suggestive without any data. It signs off by saying there is no gauertee that you won’t get seriously ill.

To be honest I’d look at that pessimistically, poor antibody/response against the new variants, some vague suggestive T Cell response and no guarantee that you won’t get seriously ill, plus the study hasn’t been peer reviewed, it’s no smoking gun. To be honest it’s also a very misleading headline.

In fact it suggests what I have been saying these vaccines are brilliant at protecting original COVID 6 months ago, but the new variants are problematic for our existing vaccines.

I can understand people wanting the vaccines to be the passport back to normality, they will help with return a return fro restriction of liberties from Sring to Autumn, but I think people need to look around, Europe is in lock down, new variants are becoming dominant, for the first time during this Europe has closed her borders, the new variants are attacking the level of protection in our current vaccines, no point saying everything is cool and without risk and hey cool wel all be ok in the summer when we get a jab, we’ve taken a step forward and so has the virus.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[LinekersLegs]

It’s not efficacy, it’s a measure of the antibody response which is poor. It does show a T-Cell response, but it always should after a vaccines T-Cells are memory protective immune cells, if you inject yourself with an MRNA there is always going to be a T-Cell response. To be honest the article is vague and suggestive without any data. It signs off by saying there is no gauertee that you won’t get seriously ill.

To be honest I’d look at that pessimistically, poor antibody/response against the new variants, some vague suggestive T Cell response and no guarantee that you won’t get seriously ill, plus the study hasn’t been peer reviewed, it’s no smoking gun. To be honest it’s also a very misleading headline.

In fact it suggests what I have been saying these vaccines are brilliant at protecting original COVID 6 months ago, but the new variants are problematic for our existing vaccines.

I can understand people wanting the vaccines to be the passport back to normality, they will help with return restriction of liberties, but I think people need to look around, Europe is in lock down, new variants are becoming dominant, for the first time during this Europe has closed her borders, the new variants are attacking the level of protection in our current vaccines, no point saying everything, is cool without risk and hey cool wel all e ok in the summer when we get a jab, we’ve taken a step forward and so has the virus.

Agree, am trying to find the preprint it is based on

edit link was in the article

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