Covid-19 #37: Mississippi Worming

[Luzifer's right hand]

3 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

Last post for today :-)

Now on the subject of vaccine vs infection in terms of immune protection.

Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine—but no infection parties, please  (sciencemag.org)

 

Good news for people who had a mild or asymptomatic case before.

They did find that having Covid-19+a vaccine is an even better protection.

[rotting sea cow]

Quote

A contaminant found in a batch of Moderna Inc's (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccines delivered to Japan is believed to be a metallic particle, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported, citing sources at the health ministry.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/contaminant-moderna-vaccines-suspected-be-metallic-powder-nhk-2021-08-27/

uh?

[karaddin]

I know this was back almost a week but thanks for this. I don't like Gladys, I'm politically well to the left of Labor ffs and yet I keep finding myself needing to push back on bullshit against her. Yes they made a mistake not going into lockdown faster, but there's every indication it was a mistake made in good faith based on the excellent performance of contact tracing in past outbreaks and the awareness that lockdown is a negative outcome as well. Especially when the general government had cut off the major lockdown support. In particular I really hate the politicisation of a long serving public servant in Dr Chant by acting like she's prioritising liberal party politics, not public health.

Almost all the criticism since we went into lockdown has been calling for the bullshit lockdown theatre that Dan loves to engage in, which involves heavy policing and very punitive fines targeting disadvantaged communities and can actually deter honesty when dealing with authorities. It's all being driven by people with a political agenda and the media looking to sensationalize everything, and if they succeed in getting Gladys replaced they'll wind up with a hard right premier that actually will "let it rip" and fuck us all. 

None of which is to excuse Morrison and the failures of the federal vaccination program, which leads me to

On 8/25/2021 at 11:07 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

Morrison is arm-wrestling the Western Australians over re-opening. Bashing New Zealand is really a way of him taking aim at the Eliminationist State Premiers, while trying to justify Gladys.

Morrison is a self serving worm. He's absolutely exploiting NZ for domestic politics, but I promise you it's entirely for his own benefit - he and Gladys are not allies despite both being liberals, the state and federal government's are actually pretty hostile to each other at the moment. But even if they were allies, he'd still only be helping her if it was still to his benefit as well.

I really hope NZ is able to pull it back, but I think despite the quick lockdown from Dan it's getting away from Victoria as well and that really sucks.

The other big failure here was the hit job on the AZ vaccine that drastically slowed down our roll out.

[Zorral]

Since Henri's rain effects finally passed we've had massively hot, humid, dirty air. So hit Trader Joe’s early in the AM. I hadn't shopped there in over a week, so it was interesting to see such a difference since then -- today everybody shopping (not that many, another reason for going so early), and staff, were again masked up (I was double-masked), which nobody was the last time I was there.  Also on the streets – locals, and people who work here too, I guess? – the majority were masked as well.  It seems a buncha NYers are taking Delta most seriously, even when, as here, the zip code is very highly vaccinated, and our infection rate has dropped to virtually zero, there are no hospitalizations, and positivity tests are also extremely low. I hope we can keep it up.  Can we bar those from South Dakota, Florida and etc. from entering?

[Padraig]

4 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Good news for people who had a mild or asymptomatic case before.

They did find that having Covid-19+a vaccine is an even better protection.

Although the study doesn't discuss whether having an asymptomatic infection gives as much protection as having a more severe case (everything else being the same).  Trying to get an answer to this may result in sample size issues.

Quote

Nussenzweig’s group has published data showing people who recover from a SARS-CoV-2 infection continue to develop increasing numbers and types of coronavirus-targeting antibodies for up to 1 year. By contrast, he says, twice-vaccinated people stop seeing increases “in the potency or breadth of the overall memory antibody compartment” a few months after their second dose.

I thought that section was quite interesting.  Initially people were quite excited about the potency of the vaccine response but the natural response keeps developing further, which the vaccine fails to do.  And I remember reading elsewhere that the natural response has a much wider breadth, given it is responding to the full virus, not just the "spike" part in the vaccine.  (IIRC).  So its not just about the quantity of response.

This may mean that there is room to improve the vaccines in the years ahead?  Gives hope for all the other vaccines that are still been developed, or second generation vaccines from the current crop.

I don't have anything to say about the Moderna contamination but the news about it mentioned that Moderna has so far delivered to the EU nearly 75 million doses, with a contract for 460 million shots.  I knew it hadn't delivered a huge number in H1 but it certainly hasn't ramped up as much as I thought it would.

[Mudguard]

23 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Although the study doesn't discuss whether having an asymptomatic infection gives as much protection as having a more severe case (everything else being the same).  Trying to get an answer to this may result in sample size issues.

Yeah, I was about to post the same.  The paper did not break down the group of infected people, so it is impossible to say whether asymptomatic infection results in the same protection as a mildly symptomatically infection or a severe infection.  It's not clear how many asymptomatic infected people, if any, were lumped in the group of infected people analyzed by the study.

[Zorral]

8 hours ago, Spockydog said:

This thread is fucking wild. How can people be so stupid? Surely this is actual Darwinism in action.

Quoting a comment about this insanity from an Elsewhere:

Quote

 

I get that we are dealing with cult thinking. I get that there are people who simply cannot take in information and process it. I get that covid is part of the culture wars.

But I do not get I would never take a vaccine designed for humans but I would happily take horse medicine: I truly can't construct a mental pathway for that.

 

 

This response is is good as well:

Quote

It's like, they recognize COVID as a dangerous threat, serious enough to eat disgusting horse medicine, but not quite serious enough to voluntarily wear a mask.

 

[Fez]

They are pathologically incapable of admitting that people they hate (liberals, Democrats, the media, etc.) are correct about something.

[DireWolfSpirit]

PCP is a horse tranquilizer, maybe the Republicans can start taking that?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

13 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

PCP is a horse tranquilizer, maybe the Republicans can start taking that?

It's also a party drug (angel dust). Altho I think Ketamine (Special K) is more commonly used for either purpose these days.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

This may mean that there is room to improve the vaccines in the years ahead?  Gives hope for all the other vaccines that are still been developed, or second generation vaccines from the current crop.

It does seem a bit unlikely that the very first covid vaccine developed, as good as it is, would turn out to be the best possible one.

[DireWolfSpirit]

4 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

It's also a party drug (angel dust). Altho I think Ketamine (Special K) is more commonly used for either purpose these days.

https://www.rollingstone.com › ...
Bill Maher: Heroin 'a Gateway to Being a Republican'

[Zorral]

17 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

https://www.rollingstone.com › ...
Bill Maher: Heroin 'a Gateway to Being a Republican'

Personally, for years many of the ilks of my sorts have just assumed that the ilks of Their sorts have been doing meth and PCP and angel dust, etc. for decades now.  Which of course rotted what brain they had left -- i.e. the zombie effect.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

Although the study doesn't discuss whether having an asymptomatic infection gives as much protection as having a more severe case (everything else being the same).  Trying to get an answer to this may result in sample size issues.

I thought that section was quite interesting.  Initially people were quite excited about the potency of the vaccine response but the natural response keeps developing further, which the vaccine fails to do.  And I remember reading elsewhere that the natural response has a much wider breadth, given it is responding to the full virus, not just the "spike" part in the vaccine.  (IIRC).  So its not just about the quantity of response.

This may mean that there is room to improve the vaccines in the years ahead?  Gives hope for all the other vaccines that are still been developed, or second generation vaccines from the current crop.

The mRNA vaccines are built around a spike, is there a vaccine that uses more than just a spike, one of the non-mRNA ones? Could they possibly work better long term?

[Zorral]

49 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

The mRNA vaccines are built around a spike, is there a vaccine that uses more than just a spike, one of the non-mRNA ones? Could they possibly work better long term?

The Cuban one -- made for alpha -- isn't working against delta.  Yet another reason that for the first time ever the majority of Cubans have lost faith in the government and the Revolution and no longer support it -- as have so many of we long-time supporters in other countries.  

[Luzifer's right hand]

53 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

The mRNA vaccines are built around a spike, is there a vaccine that uses more than just a spike, one of the non-mRNA ones? Could they possibly work better long term?

3 of the Chinese vaccines and the Indian vaccine are inactivated virus vaccines. But as the world is split on the vaccine side of things I dunno if there is much english language information about them.

[williamjm]

50 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

3 of the Chinese vaccines and the Indian vaccine are inactivated virus vaccines. But as the world is split on the vaccine side of things I dunno if there is much english language information about them.

There's also Valneva's vaccine which they are trying to get approved in the UK later this year. In the past they have made the claim that their vaccine might be more effective against variants due to having more of the virus to target, but we'll have to see if their results back up their claims.

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

The Cuban one -- made for alpha -- isn't working against delta. 

Ouch.  Sorry to hear that.  Would it take long to rework it?  I did notice that numbers are still quite bad there.  Although, its the country Georgia that is the worst in the world right now.

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

There's also Valneva's vaccine which they are trying to get approved in the UK later this year. In the past they have made the claim that their vaccine might be more effective against variants due to having more of the virus to target, but we'll have to see if their results back up their claims.

The fact that the Chinese versions have generated some bad press doesn't encourage one.  But still, the idea sounds promising.

Even if it doesn't hit the same level of effectiveness that Pfizer/Moderna did, if that effectiveness is less affected by variants, that's still a win.  But as you said, we'll see.

[Impmk2]

I think we had a discussion around neutralising/ non-neutralising antibodies and potential for cross protection a few months back. There's good data on the influenza virus about this - there is a decent level or cross protection between strains there too.

That the whole cell vaccines aren't great could be down to a number of factors. It's hard to mass produce an inactivated pathogen without destroying the antigen you want the immune response too. Bit of a balancing act between safety and efficacy.

Another factor when looking at breadth of immune response is the route of infection. A covid infection is going to result in a variety of immune responses depending on the niche. Mucosal immunity may be unsurprisingly important.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

8 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

The mRNA vaccines are built around a spike, is there a vaccine that uses more than just a spike, one of the non-mRNA ones? Could they possibly work better long term?

Vaccines made of dead virus elicit antibody response to all antigens, not just the spike. The problem is, dead virus vaccines are pretty much the least effective form of vaccine, because what you inject is the sum total of what the immune system can practice on. Live attenuated vaccines and mRNA vaccines reproduce the antigens in the body and so give the immune system more to work with.

82 cases here today, another day on day increase. The good news is 2nd day in a row with zero cases in Wellington. It's a bit of a concern that we have still seen a day on day increase this far into the outbreak. This means control of the outbreak is not as effective as it could be. But it doesn't yet mean it's out of control. In a few more days if daily cases are still going up in Auckland then "out of control" is a phrase that might start to be used, and that may start to force a rethink of the strategy. I would hate for our detractors to be right that Delta can't be eliminated once it gets this far into a population, but it's a possibility we can't pretend doesn't exist.

6 Days of Auckland case numbers this week:

- Monday: 33 new cases

- Tuesday: 38 new cases (+5 day on day)

- Wednesday: 61 new cases (+23 day on day)

- Thursday: 66 new cases (+5 day on day)

- Friday: 70 new cases (+4 day on day)

- Saturday: 82 new cases (+12 day on day).

Thursday and Friday were causes for hope. Saturday has brought us some anxiety.