The tl;dr non sciencey bit is that it’s got a load of mutations that, individually, could make the virus less viable but when combined together have the opposite effect and might radically change how it interacts with the antibodies that are supposed to give us protection. Which is shit luck but there you go.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
The tl;dr non sciencey bit is that it’s got a load of mutations that, individually, could make the virus less viable but when combined together have the opposite effect and might radically change how it interacts with the antibodies that are supposed to give us protection. Which is shit luck but there you go.
But surely we haven’t vaccinated at these levels?
We’ve given 7 bn vaccine shots Worldwide in the past 12 or so months.
Pre Covid the only people I knew who took flu jabs were the +70s? Nor have we done lockdown, closed borders etc.
I mean, surely we’ve made it much harder for Covid to spread right?
Population density might come into it. Go back a couple of centuries and there just wasn't the the sheer number of humans all densely packed into the same places as there is now. Can we look forward to more infectious disease and more mutation as time goes on, I don't know?
I once read all human infectious disease originated in animals, simply because there were never enough humans on the planet for their own to evolve. I might have misunderstood or it might be bollocks of course.
Lockdowns and closed borders will have zero effect on virus evolution (other than if they slow down spread, which slows down evolution). The extensive vaccination program might but doubtful it would put more pressure on the virus to evolve than our own immune responses.
The one area where modern medicine might be accelerating virus evolution is when we keep immune suppressed covid patients alive for a long time, giving them monoclonal antibody treatments. There are plausible theories about this being the background for delta and omicron. Although there are equally plausible theories about it happening when the virus bounces in and out of animal hosts. So feck knows really.
All I can say for certain is that your obsession with blaming lockdowns for everything bad about the pandemic is wide of the mark here.
It’s also worth noting that (potentially) immune evading new variants like omicron show the foolishness of strategies based on “letting it rip” on the assumption that immunity after infection is permanent (or even very long term) South Africa got through their delta wave without much (any?) lockdowns because they had a very young population so could afford to let the virus spread without mitigation and not experience too many excess deaths. And now look at them….
At this stage the pattern where all of these new variants emerged in countries that either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep community transmission below extremely high levels is fairly fecking obvious.
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I’ve never once declared we should “let it rip” and the bolded is severely misrepresenting me.
And your final paragraph does give some excellent food for thought in fairness.
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Maybe it has to do with the overall population, too? We're approaching 8 billion human beings on the planet right now. Influenza probably never had that many hosts and I could imagine that each host increases the speed at which the virus mutates. I mean, I'm by no means an expert, far from it, but I recently read an article that claimed that the industrial nations actually harmed themselves by hoarding vaccine doses and not giving them to poorer countries because the virus can freely transmit over there and thus quickly develop new variants/mutations. Which is more or less what we're witnessing with Omicron right now.
Also, even if the vaccines don't protect to the same extent against Omicron as they do against Delta, you're still more resistant to it and far less likely to end up hospitalized which is essentially what it's all about: On the route from the pandemic to an endemic, keep the graph flat and try to not overstrain the capacities of our health care infrastructure.
Ok. Apologies. I know how annoying it is to be misrepresented.
I wasn’t really aiming at you personally so much as the various (legitimate) experts who advocated strategies around letting the virus spread freely among the less vulnerable.
With hindsight, the best approach would have been to do everything possible to keep community spread as low as possible, for as long as possible. Then hope that vaccines can stamp transmission down even further. Which might have avoided these most recent variants. Vaccines vs original covid (or even alpha) would crush the hell out of it. Obviously a fecking nightmare (probably impossible?) to keep transmission low all over the world for as long as we needed. But arguably less of a long term nightmare than what we’re facing now.
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The WHO warned against the hoarding of vaccines from the off with this as one of the main reasons right?
Your final paragraph here represents my thoughts much better than Pogue’s claim.
I get that, but my argument has always been about an inevitability factor. I think we all could have done everything “right” and still end up here in a year, or two or three. Because we’ll never be able to do everything “right” for long enough.
I certainly can’t say it with any certainty obviously and you’d hope there’s a possibility we could have been in a better position, especially for future pandemics.
I'm afraid that isn't true. It could become more transmissible and more deadly as long as the incubation period remains so long.
It could also become less deadly.
surely the vaccines make this argument a non-starter?
It's possible that evolution has played a part in previous pandemics which we are disrupting now.
In 1918 an estimated 50,000,000 died and you can make assumptions that proportionally they were the most vulnerable and had the least effective immune systems to fight that strain of influenza. The remaining population who had been infected (which was estimated at two thirds of the population) had immune systems which fought off the virus and that would have been passed genetically through families which may have an impact on the virus becoming less virulent through generations.
It's interesting that this will be the first pandemic that we've fought off with vaccines and it could even lead to it going on longer (but with lower mortality)?
In 1918 an estimated 50,000,000 died and you can make assumptions that proportionally they were the most vulnerable and had the least effective immune systems to fight that strain of influenza. The remaining population who had been infected (which was estimated at two thirds of the population) had immune systems which fought off the virus and that would have been passed genetically through families which may have an impact on the virus becoming less virulent through generations.
It's interesting that this will be the first pandemic that we've fought off with vaccines and it could even lead to it going on longer (but with lower mortality)?
That is by no means certain. But fingers crossed. We’ll know more in a few weeks.
What makes the next few weeks/months likely to be shitty is that even if vaccines gives us the exact same protection against omicron as they do against delta (which is highly unlikely but hope springs eternal!) and the only difference is increased transmissibility then we’re still in for a world of hurt, considering how many problems the delta wave is already causing.
Omicron specific vaccine boosters could be the game changer here. They might get vaccine efficacy right back up to original covid levels. And then we have to hope we don’t get another variant with such radical changes to its structure. And that is possible. The fecking thing can’t keep changing shape this much and still fulfil its primary function.
That’s the scary thing. It has no pressure in either direction. We’re relying on dumb luck to end up with less deadly variants.
When will it be over @Pogue Mahone ?
Last summer a virologist who’s been right about most things guessed at 2023/24.
Who is that?
Is this in UK?
To be honest, it was the mutations bit of the hoarding complaint that always confused me. The moral case that we were vaccinating people who were unlikely to die, while people who were at high risk of death were left unprotected - that one I understood.
I don't really understand the mutations bit of the argument though. If the thought is that the vaccine either help stop infection or stops it faster in an individual, so less opportunity to mutate - why would a case in the UK be better than a case in a less vaxxed country? Maybe I'm missing something.
Vaccine technology/production hoarding though - that's a different matter. It became a huge deal as soon as the mRNA efficacy trial results came out. It immediately put massive pressure on their ability to ramp up and they (understandably) hoarded every relevent supply chain component - from specialist lipids to reactor liners to super deep freezes.
Meanwhile, more conventional vaccines, like the inactivated virus ones were getting more conventional efficacy results. That doesn't mean they were rubbish though, just that they weren't the superstar performers. They were however the kind of vaccines that could have been produced at a lot more sites, including plant in Africa.
That perception of inferior v superior even undermined AZ, but it was worse for the old technology vaccines. Things like vaccine passports actually reinforced that perception - with lots of vaccine types effectively leaving people "unvaccinated" in the eyes of the world and inevitably impacting both availability and take-up.
When we do get some breathing space, the world will need to look at this is the light of the next pandemic. New capacity, new production locations, new agreements on how approvals work. The German government effectively sponsored Biontech's development work, Pfizer developed and built massive production capacity - and it was great that they could. But not enough to deal with an unprepared world.
Irish ID consultant, who I know personally (weirdly, via my son’s football club!) He has a twitter account but tends not to tweet about covid (got sick of the arguments/pile-ons every time he said something people didn’t want to hear) so if I share his account you’ll just get a load of tweets about HIV.
That argument never made much sense to me either.
One thing I did worry about was the combination of very high spread in a partially vaccinated community.
That might cause a selective pressure for variants that have mutations to evade that specific vaccine (based on my limited understanding anyway). For a country with a young population like South Africa a case could be made that the best approach for the health of the world would be zero vaccines until we reach a point where we’re certain we can very quickly vaccinate the majority of their population with a highly effective vaccine. Until then, better to vaccinate nobody. Obviously a deeply ethically dubious approach. It has to be said, though, a hypothetical scenario where all of the vaccines are scrupulously shared equally amongst all the countries in the world could end up just as bad as where we are now, if not worse.
Similarly, the Uk leaving millions of people partially vaccinated with that long gap between first and second doses - while community transmission was incredibly high - also made me squeamish.
The odds of a covid case (positive test) leading to a hospitalisation had been falling in the UK since vaccines were introduced. Then the ratio started to worsen, but is now improving again as boosters kick in.
This graph looks at how many cases on average it takes before one person gets hospitalised.
Or for people who like to see the data the other way up! This time
the same thing with hospitalisations as a percentage of cases:
A small proportion of a big number is still a big number - that's why there's so much work going on to understand omicron. If it really does lead to more cases but has the same case/hospitalisation rate it'll create agony to health services right across Europe and that will mean more restrictions to slow it down - ie: flatten the curve.
If it hospitalises a bigger proportion (maybe just because vaccines or past infection don't do such an efficient job of keeping infected people out of hospital) then things turn nasty very fast and we're looking at proper lockdowns again.
This graph looks at how many cases on average it takes before one person gets hospitalised.
Or for people who like to see the data the other way up! This time
A small proportion of a big number is still a big number - that's why there's so much work going on to understand omicron. If it really does lead to more cases but has the same case/hospitalisation rate it'll create agony to health services right across Europe and that will mean more restrictions to slow it down - ie: flatten the curve.
If it hospitalises a bigger proportion (maybe just because vaccines or past infection don't do such an efficient job of keeping infected people out of hospital) then things turn nasty very fast and we're looking at proper lockdowns again.
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From my limited knowledge of viruses it's purpose is not to kill you so most likely it will evolve to be more contagious but less deadly - same as flu.
Of course, nothing is given but considering the mutations and data that we currently know and the more experience we get in treating it on paper it should become less and less deadly.
Surely it’s just, higher percentage of vaccinated within a population, more difficult for virus to spread, ergo less opportunity/hosts for mutation
Therefore 48% vaccinated in UK and 48% vaccinated in South Africa, is better than 90% UK, 6% Africa. (Obviously those figures are not the actual figures)
Or am I completely missing something?
Not an epidemiologist but that only sounds like it only really works in locations with a kind of localised herd immunity that's holding R below 1. The UK got to that point with alpha having vaccinated most of its adults. It lost that stability as delta came in - despite 90% of adults vaccinated and a population wide immunity (vaxxed + infected) of 95% or so. The boosters were starting to push things in the right direction but it looks like omicron is going to cost us that battle on the infection front - though hopefully not on the severe disease scale.Surely it’s just, higher percentage of vaccinated within a population, more difficult for virus to spread, ergo less opportunity/hosts for mutation
Therefore 48% vaccinated in UK and 48% vaccinated in South Africa, is better than 90% UK, 6% Africa. (Obviously those figures are not the actual figures)
Or am I completely missing something?
Interesting write-up on current global production here:
https://globalcommissionforpostpandemicpolicy.org/covid-19-vaccine-production-to-november-30th-2021/
Headline stats:
About 11billion vaccine doses have now been produced, current production around 1b/month.
AZ/Oxford now the highest volume product
China is the world's largest producer, with the EU and India following behind them.
Well, we did have lockdowns. I guess it depends on how you define lockdown. We were on Lockdown Level 4 (out of a possible 5).
Also, to say we have a "very young population" is relative. Compared to the UK - yes, but we still have over 1 million people aged 75 and older. So to say we can afford to let it spread is not quite accurate...
I've pulled out of mine this coming weekend. Got an important work event coming up, and social events around Christmas. Would rather remove an event I don't really want to be at to lower my risk overall
Merry fricking Christmas. Our office party will probably be cancelled now. And to top it off Pakistan have now put the UK on their amber list today and will go to red soon enough, just as my tickets were paid for.
And to top it off Pakistan have now put the UK on their amber list today and will go to red soon enough, just as my tickets were paid for. So Boris will be making a decision on England’s Christmas restrictions by the end of next week.
I have a horrible feeling that by then infection rates will be sky high and it will be another Christmas of not mixing.
I have a horrible feeling that by then infection rates will be sky high and it will be another Christmas of not mixing.
Not yet known if this is Delta or Omicron but another Christmas party in trouble, this time in Spain. It looks like 68 hospital staff were infected at a Christmas meal and/or the related Christmas party.
https://english.elpais.com/society/...istmas-after-malaga-coronavirus-outbreak.html
Could be significant in multiple ways. Staff mostly vaxxed and boosted. Some of them have probably had covid earlier in the pandemic. None of them so far showing anything other than minor symptoms.
https://english.elpais.com/society/...istmas-after-malaga-coronavirus-outbreak.html
Could be significant in multiple ways. Staff mostly vaxxed and boosted. Some of them have probably had covid earlier in the pandemic. None of them so far showing anything other than minor symptoms.
A pandemic seems a fair trade off to not have to attend the office Christmas party.Merry fricking Christmas. Our office party will probably be cancelled now.
Tottenham have just announced that 6 players and two members of staff have tested positive, quite useful for us at Brighton as we have our own injury list and play them on Sunday.
No mention obviously whether it is delta or omicron yet.
No mention obviously whether it is delta or omicron yet.
Likely that some United players test positive just before the busy Xmas period
Good luck trying to sell that to the public off the back of them apparently breaking their own rules last year. That'll be a big feck you from everyone on the fence.
It's been hard to get a clear picture of which way the data is skewing in the news over the weekend / early this week. Most mates or family of mine seem to think the new variant is fading away which is clearly not the case. Strange atmosphere around the whole thing.
Imagine if they announce the new variant will help destroy Delta and we need to go out and get as pissed as possible over Christmas
ready to do my bit
ready to do my bit
Started on this last week just incase
Not really. It's almost certain that Omicron is going to cause a sharp rise in cases. If the party season looks as good for Omicron as it appears to then we'll see total cases at least double before New Year's Eve.
The thing we don't know right now is what that does to hospitalisations and deaths. The optimists are hoping that it won't double them (due to vaccines and boosters being better at protecting from severe illness than from infection). The pessimists say not only will it double them it might do worse, and it might attack a different age profile (like unvaxxed under 12s) than Delta did.
All we really know is that there are going to be a lot of infections in the next few weeks. We'll know more about hospitalisations in the next week or so, probably enough for the stats people to feed into the models that tell them how things are going to get if we don't slow it down or lockdown.