From Nature
Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.
A top priority is to track the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana this month and has turned up in travellers to Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant's properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.
The World Health Organization is monitoring a new variant with numerous mutations to the spike protein, scheduling a special meeting Friday to discuss what it may mean for vaccines and treatments, officials said Thursday.
Journal Reference:
Ewen Callaway. Heavily mutated coronavirus variant puts scientists on alert, (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-03552-w)
Editor's Note: The UK, France and some Asian countries have suspended flights from 6 African countries as from 26 Nov at the time of processing this story Other countries may choose to do the same.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:20AM (18 children)
The vaccines need to be updated but the problem is shortages of the borosilicate vials, injection syringes, and so on. The manufacturers have been trying to get an emergency exception to allow reuse. They have all been allocated to the billions of pre-orderes first generation vaccines that will soon be obsolete.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:57AM (16 children)
Adapted vaccines could be available around February (90 days). [zerohedge.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:02PM (13 children)
Ready to go into nonexistent vials, then from there into nonexistent syringes. There is no reason these consumables can't be reused multiple times, except red tape.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:10PM (10 children)
There's a cost to sterilizing them, if there are material shortages that would be looked at. Bacterial contamination is serious issue, it's why we always use clean needles even with multi-use vials. The red tape is there for a reason.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:49PM (9 children)
The benefit outwieghs the cost. Studies on diabetics show needle reuse is safe and effective without any sterilization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:00PM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:07PM (5 children)
"No adverse effect of syringe reuse was identified. The authors conclude that diabetic patients frequently reuse disposable syringes, without apparent harmful effect."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02602347 [springer.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:41PM (2 children)
"We conclude reuse of syringes is associated with microbial contamination. The findings that 4/18 syringes being contaminated with bacteria is an alarming situation."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S222218081460712X [sciencedirect.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @02:14PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @02:19PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staphylococcus_aureus#Role_in_disease [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:41PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:48PM
Does the study cover reuse on the same or a different patient?
A major issue with reuse is transferring disease from one to another.
Sadly our medical folks have not seen much practice in the art of safe reuse.
Sometimes the 'oh no' overload makes this feel like the 'chicken little' phase of the disease.
If the casualty rates of going up in vaccinated populations, then we need to worry.
Mutation is an expected, part of this we need to live with.
(Score: 2) by johaquila on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:49PM (1 child)
"without any sterilization"???
I can believe that, but obviously that's (1) for reusing a needle with the same person, (2) not too long after the previous use (almost certainly no more than a day later), and (3) in a home or work setting. Why this is relevant?
(1) No chance to transfer germs from the blood stream of one person to that of another if it's both the same person.
(2) The needle, which is no longer in its sterile packaging, isn't lying around for too long and accumulating germs from the environment.
(3) The environment only contains the usual household germs that the patient is used to, not other people's germs and especially not the super-resistant bacteria common in hospitals.
(Score: 2) by johaquila on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:51PM
Oops, apparently it's actually about syringe reuse, not needle reuse, but the principle is essentially the same in both cases.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by VLM on Saturday November 27 2021, @08:13PM (1 child)
You have to be practical, in the sense that politically in the USA the folks who never met a vaxxx they didn't like on social media correlates with the type of people who like sharing recreational drug needles.
You could go to the average D party political rally with a rusty spoon of vaxxx and a single syringe and a line would definitely form.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @09:42PM
I take it you got shit on during Thanksgiving again? Or maybe tHeLeFt canceled you? Maybe you dad found your fleshlight and reuzed his sin is in a loveless marriage? Then he used the fleshlight? Now you have 1/2 a sibling molding under your bed?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @07:09PM (1 child)
They should have developed the vaccine before they released a new variant.
(Score: 3, Touché) by edIII on Saturday November 27 2021, @08:31PM
Yes, yes, well the next time your visiting the Committee of 300 please regale them with your uncommon sense.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 27 2021, @09:52PM
I thought that was the justification for putting a 5G chip in there?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:36AM (39 children)
While the vaccine proponents were claiming that This Time It Will Work™ and damn all the decades-long history of failures.
Now the real-world biology is reasserting itself, but the damage done by stupidity and greed is continuing to pile up.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:55AM (22 children)
It is important to remember that vaccine-induced immunity is polyclonal, it attacks two or more parts of the spike protein at the same time. That makes it much more effective. It is unlikely for a strain to randomly harbor two or more mutations that render the virus immune.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:02PM (20 children)
There are 50 mutations in this variant, over 30 in the spike protein and 10 of these in the receptor binding domain. The spike is now a different shape with the expected consequence that existing antibodies may not recognize it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dalek on Saturday November 27 2021, @04:43PM (19 children)
The mutations in Omicron are probably because it mutated for a long time within a single person who was unable to clear the virus. It would have encountered a wide range of antibodies while infecting that person. Mutations that were able to evade all of those antibodies would have a survival advantage. This almost certainly isn't the fault of vaccines. If this was evolving in a vaccinated population, it's highly unlikely that all of these mutations would have shown up at once instead of seeing the mutations accumulate over time. It's impossible to say for sure, but it's possible that being vaccinated might have given the infected person enough antibodies to begin with that they could have cleared the virus prior to it mutating in this way. There's no guarantee that vaccines would have allowed an immunocompromised person to clear the virus, but it might give them a better shot at doing so.
Antibodies might not bind as readily to the spike protein in the Omicron variant. Another concern is that this variant might have the potential to avoid T cells. From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w/ [nature.com]:
That last part about T cells is alarming. Vaccines were quite effective at preventing hospitalization and death even when antibodies were less effective against certain variants. It's likely that vaccines will still have some effectiveness against Omicron. Getting a booster should provide more protection against variants by producing a much wider range of antibodies, though it's unknown at this time to what degree that helps against Omicron.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @05:27PM (2 children)
Yeah... and if we want to go more in-depth, it's only spike protein antibodies that will be reduced in efficacy. People who've recovered from coronavirus should have nucleocapsid antibodies. The N-protein also induces a robust T-cell response making it a strong potential target for revised vaccines.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:16PM
T-cells readied to attack RNA-polymerase, is yet another protection.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04186-8 [nature.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @02:54AM
There are also mutations in the other proteins, so natural infection doesn't necessarily provide more protection depending on the exact epitopes affected, not that vaccine and infection based immunity is either/or anyway. And before you pontificate about N-proteins being targeted by revised vaccines, you may want to review the research as to why they didn't use them in SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in the first place.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:38PM (13 children)
The T-cell response, even to the original variant, isn't that impressive anyway though. Sure, the vaccine efficacy is dropping 50% in 6-9 months, hence the boosters, but normal (infected, unvaccinated) immunity is https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2666-5247%2821%2900219-6 ). And that's before accounting for new variants.
We generate T-cells in response to common cold, but we don't stay immune to it (or them, common cold is several causative viruses, one of them a coronavirus).
Covid re-infections are not proving to be benign or even less-severe-than-initial either, people are still dying from second infections. See here for one case study asymptomatic on first infection, very much symptomatic on second - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55338875 [bbc.co.uk]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @07:12PM (1 child)
Have you tried reading the article you refer to?
On the very first page: "We performed ancestral and descendent states analyses to estimate the expected declines in antibody levels over time, the probabilities of reinfection based on antibody level,"
On the page 8, authors honestly admit: "The identification of B-cell and T-cell populations—including their quantity, subsets, effector or memory phenotype, or persistence— could be more directly causal of immunity or better indicators of the durability of immunity than antibody level alone."
To sum it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in_garbage_out [wikipedia.org]
Meanwhile in the real world: "Pre-existing polymerase-specific T cells expand in abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04186-8 [nature.com]
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday November 28 2021, @10:30AM
All this talk about theoretical T-cell immunity, but in the (real) real world, re-infections _are_ happening _already_ at around the timescale suggested (virus has only been around in humans for 2 years).
In the real world re-infected people _are_ having worse second infections, and dying (of the second infection, not the first, if that isn't bleeding obvious).
If you want to know why, in the real world, speak to any of the 10% or so covid survivors with long-covid, and you'll know that covid leaves you significantly weaker and less able to fight off infections (covid and other illnesses) that wouldn't have been a major problem before. If you want more theory look at any of the papers on the damage covid does to the immune system, turning it on itself and producing autoantibodies at levels even higher than lupus (SLE).
And, again, in the real world we _get_immune to some disease but don't _stay_ immune for any significant time - the common cold being the, er, common example...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:15PM
Actually, this mutant contains the Q498R mutation we were warned about last winter:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-021-00954-4 [nature.com]
If affinity for ACE2 drops below 100 pM like that study indicates, no antibody will be able to compete:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC42497/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 28 2021, @02:55AM (9 children)
And, if you want a gauge as to the accuracy of all the COVID predictions thrown around on SN over the past 20 months, take a survey of how many times the pundits predicted the virus to be mutating to more benign form.... Yeah, stable geniuses, that will happen over LONG timeframes, but not likely for decades or more. At the moment the real experts are sweating bullets worried that the next major variant will be more deadly than the last.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @06:51AM
The same "real experts" who were pulling inflated predictions out of their arses in early 2020, and were spreading FUD about every single new mutation since.
Any honest organization would have fired the crooks with extreme prejudice after their first couple cases of getting nothing right.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by choose another one on Sunday November 28 2021, @10:45AM (5 children)
Mutating to a more benign form was always pseudo-science. The virus attack timeline has been extensively documented since the early days :
symptoms at 1-14 days post, typical 5-6 days
infectious for 10-14 days (starting maybe 1-2 days before symptoms)
death at 2-8 weeks post symptoms
How on earth anyone can claim there is selection pressure to not-kill-the-host when death only occurs after the host is no longer infectious is beyond me (did smallpox ever mutate to benign, or polio?). That host is done, used up, there is no point to the virus leaving it alive in short-medium term (until it maybe loses immunity and becomes an infection target again). If anything, selection pressure will be the other way round - better to eliminate the used-up hosts in the hope that the newest hosts will travel out(to greener fields for the virus) when they only have dead members of their species to talk to locally.
Selection pressure for benign form will only (maybe) appear when the total host population is in danger of collapse - there are a **** of a lot of us to kill before that happens.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Sunday November 28 2021, @12:21PM (1 child)
The selection pressure depends on the reaction to the virus. If, for example, every person would self-isolate at the onset of symptoms, the virus would mutate to become asymptomatic. By analogy, the better the spread of the virus is stopped through isolation, the more harmless the virus will become. The problem with covid19 is, that the variability of symptoms is high (expressivity), thereby requiring very strict isolation rules to be effective, i.e. the same virus can be asymptomatic in person A and deadly in person B, thereby making it difficult to control the virus. The same principle still applies, though.
The reverse can happen too, as you point out. If the virus in continuously challenged but not stopped it will become more aggressive. This is happening at the moment in Europe where symptomatic kids are attending school (probably another lockdown is around the corner). This, however, has nothing to do with how deadly the virus is or when death occurs. The criterion is when the virus is stopped at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @03:44PM
The virus can spread best in hospitals where a lot of immunosuppressed strangers congregate. That seems to be the major selection pressure. It has to get you into the hospital.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:40PM (1 child)
And yet, it seems to "carry the weight" of any other kind of science when presented by the true believers.
Science is messy, it's neither black nor white, and so much hovers around the 50% grey values that choosing a side is more subjective than objective.
The main thing I feel that the "true believers" in the cult of science miss is the skewness of the data feeding the conclusions. Politically skewed, prejudicially skewed, skewed by behavioral shaping goals of all involved, skewed by social pressures toward / against conspiracy theories. My personal favorite: skewness in favor of thinning the herd, in the (usually mistaken) belief of one's self superiority / invulnerability.
Sounds more rational to me than any other selection pressure arguments I've heard... I'd give that one at least 65/35 probability of accuracy.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @09:48PM
Talk about skewed data! You just gave that outcome an approximately 186% chance of happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @07:30PM
No, it was based on compelling evidence that Russian Flu [wikipedia.org] was actually HCoV-OC43.
"Pseudo-scientists"? [news-medical.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @03:29PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @05:08PM
Could you perhaps come up with a more credible source than the NY Post?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 28 2021, @02:47AM (1 child)
Great theory, now tell us one about why we haven't seen evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How about one for why world peace is impossible, until.... Or, maybe you've got the complete inventory of earth-life's cellular content organization [ucsd.edu]?
As long as we're all feeling extra confident in our understanding of things we DON'T understand, let's start throwing around some statistics like "nearly 100% of people who died of Delta could have avoided death by vaccinating..." Yeah, if, by nearly 100 you mean something closer to 70, then, sure, let's just keep repeating "nearly 100" because it feels good to be outraged at the inability of others to see the black and white universe as we do.
/rant off - unless you start telling me how we've successfully mapped the brain and can now read your thoughts with fMRI...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @03:12AM
In the RCTs the vaccinated died at a slightly higher rate than unvaccinated:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=46224&page=1&cid=1200095#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Overall for mRNA vaccines it was 38 vs 33 deaths in vaccinated vs not. Denominators were about the same.
So there seems to be about 0% protection against death, with the best value being a 15% increased chance of dying if vaccinated.
This is the best data we have on protection against death. Observational studies also show a 66% protection against non-covid deaths. So are obviously unreliable.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm [cdc.gov]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 29 2021, @06:12PM
Roll the dice enough times and the machine wheels eventually indicate a jackpot!
It is unlikely that I would get struck by lightning since I always wear my tinfoil hat outside for protection during lightning storms. I haven't been struck by lightning yet!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @04:29PM (8 children)
Well, at least ivermectin seems to be working, according to the statistics.
What was it, something like an 80% drop in deaths and hospital time?
But of course horse poison blahblahblah ...
(Score: 5, Informative) by choose another one on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:43PM (7 children)
Do keep up, it was a 90% drop actually, and it was fabricated: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w [nature.com]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @07:29PM (6 children)
Was it or wasn't it, the thing is, that one single study makes no difference to the whole.
"Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/ [nih.gov]
"Ivermectin, A Reanalysis of the Data" - observe what changed after the allegedly fabricated study was removed from the analysis:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8415512/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:23PM (4 children)
"observe what changed after the allegedly fabricated study was removed from the analysis:"
Spell it out for us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:36PM (3 children)
Leftie, learn to read.
If organically unable to, do humanity a favor and unlearn copypasting.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Sunday November 28 2021, @06:47PM (2 children)
Not a lefty, I simply want to engage with an actual claim and not some ethereal difference that has not been declared. I would also like to learn, but I'm also not wasting my time on gish gallop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @08:54PM (1 child)
Once the insult came out, I recognized him as a troll and perhaps one of several users that write similarly--but might not insult people the same way when logged in.
Either way, don't argue with people that just want to waste your time and get a rise out of you. You will be unable to convince someone nor get them to stop trying to keep posting falsehoods here or anywhere. At best, you might get someone reading to agree with you, but I can't think of many types people here on soylent that could possibly on the fence that would suddenly pick a side based on this converation-- and decide the guy hurling insults after being refuted is actually the correct person to believe.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Tuesday November 30 2021, @05:36PM
We've all got to have our hobbies.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday November 28 2021, @10:52AM
As stated in the article I linked to, that one study made up 15% of the review papers, and many other studies have similar problems. There's a lot of crap (rushed, unchecked and downright fraudulent) around in med sci at the moment.
Ivermectin has been in trials in one of the major UK RCTs (the same ones that gave us Dex as a save, so no objections to unpatented cheap-as-chips drugs) for months now, if there is anything like a 90% cure rate they would need to stop trial early (unethical to keep giving placebos), they haven't, ergo there isn't.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:01PM (6 children)
What failure are you talking of? The Pfizer drug principals have become billionaires, Moderna was saved from bankruptcy, and some governments are working to perpetuate for them a revenue stream.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @07:58PM (5 children)
All because right-wing hysterics won't let us do a lockdown with massive contract tracing, because goobermint.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @08:04PM
To protect against omicoronvariant , you need to get vaccinated: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/26/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-omicron-covid-19-variant/ [whitehouse.gov]
Yes, that means you too double dosers. Get your boosters.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @08:21PM
who's this "us" you speak of? fuck your whole world, bitch!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:43AM (2 children)
Left-wing xenophobic racist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @05:18PM (1 child)
Nonsense. It needs to be a global lockdown. The virus doesn't care about your imaginary lines in the sand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @03:54PM
Funny thing is, you guys called it xenophobic and racist when Trump shut down travel.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:02PM (15 children)
the question remains: did it mutate in a lab or a person?
ask yourselfs this: if, plain theortically, this furin clevage site, made from a "natural virus", indeed escaped from a biolab (not necessarily china, europe also has big money churning in pharma and gen-manipulation) could the government even reveal it?
so, without lying, the source IS natural. the part that it detoured thru a open biolab window just doesn't get mentioned?
seriously, if you were in government with responsibility in keeping law and order, would you mention the " open window"?
nuclear deterrent is sooo old skool ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:41PM (13 children)
With the source material anyone could make mutations... pretty easy for someone with a basic level of molecular biology skills. It's a bit harder to do this without getting yourself infected or cover up the process of making the mutations, but still... not rocket science level. Even in South Africa there would be labs that could do this. And scientists have warned about this for decades, mainly from a terrorist group doing this.
Personally I think these mutations happend naturally, because there is an evolutionary selection pressure for them to happen and being maintained, there is no malice of whatsoever needed to explain this.
Even if they would be created in a lab (like said above), to what point? Even "big pharma" would not risk that this would get out of hand, in a medical OR economical way. Even with the current situation. It would mean that they would need to have a cure ready to sell, but they can't sell it too early, because that would be suspicious. Waiting too long and a competitor goes away with YOUR profit. And, of course, you'll have the risk of employees starting talking... if that happens... shit meets fan.
Back to those mutations, current knowledge is very limited in what mutations would do, so "releasing" something with random mutations is a waste of money at best. You'll have to test... on humans... and hope again that word does not get out.
Believe what you want, but new mutations of the virus being made in a lab would mean an army of morons (with too much money to burn) at work.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:53PM
OP is talking about the original virus, this variant is believed to have evolved in an immunocompromised individual. The selection pressure of ineffective antibodies on a pathogen is similar to that where a course of antibiotics is unfinished. This was always a fear and is part of the reason for the vaccine push.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @12:58PM (6 children)
This many mutations concentrated so highly in the spike indicates it was selected under pressure from vaccine-induced antibodies. Either passaged in a lab, or in someone (or series of someones) who is/are immunosuppressed.
The interesting part is how do you still have an antibody response if you are immunosuppressed?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:30PM (4 children)
By definition, the immune system is compromised not inactivated -- you were correct with selection pressure. [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:42PM (3 children)
Usually there is no selection for mutants in the immunocompromised: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03291-y [nature.com]
The selection only occurs if they are treated with convelescent plasma or mAbs.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:53PM (2 children)
Did you read the paper you linked?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:05PM (1 child)
"Unlike many of the other reported cases, virus evolution was not driven by the receipt of immune-based therapies (convalescent plasma or monoclonal antibodies)3-7,11. Most other cases of persistent infection have been described in people with haematological malignancies or people receiving immunosuppressive therapies for solid organ transplants or other chronic medical conditions3-10,12. There is one other documented case of prolonged infection in a person with HIV -in that case the person was ART-naïve with profound immunosuppression and genome sequencing revealed only a single emergent mutation in spike (T719I) at day 5312. Although awaiting further viral and immunological analysis, the genomic and clinical data suggest that virus evolution may have been driven by selective pressure from an impaired neutralizing antibody response."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.03.21258228v1.full-text [medrxiv.org]
So it does happen, but apparently more rarely than after antibody treatments. Also note the mutation profiles in these cases are less concentrated on the spike.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @07:12PM
Granted but hypothetically because most immunocompromised people would be treated with convalescent plasma or monoclonal antibodies?
Specifically the RBD. There's an interesting study here [nih.gov] with no convalescent plasma and B-cell target reagent (so we can't say "no monoclonal antibodies", however, Ronapreve wasn't yet approved for UK use [www.gov.uk]).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @03:05AM
Because the immune system is a complex system made up of different types of cells doing different jobs. In this case and given where the cases are concentrated, I immediately thought of HIV/AIDS. HIV causes AIDS and immunodeficiency by attacking a subset of T cells, which slows but do not stops the production or operation of the antibody part of the immune system. Therefore, you could easily get a group of people with HIV/AIDS that are not vaccinated or boosted that end up pressuring the virus this way.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:40PM (4 children)
there is "pressure" to teach a new generation of genetic ENGINEERS.
couple this with a situation of well funded modern university with trivially available chemicals and apparatuses (gen-printer2000, now with usb connectivity) and some "showmanship" to get new students to sign up, and we got ourselfs a "make aspirine at home" situation.
it is really really easy to forget, that lifting stuff less then 500g inside a lab without windows can lead to world doom.
in short, today gen-manipulation is like making and baking a cake, only everybodies near death after opening the oven ...
this -vs- welding tons of steel together, make it floatable and able to launch even more million of manhours invested fighterjets that can carry, even more complicated and energy- and a manhour intensive atom splitting devices to harass a oil rich country that wants civilian nuclear power.
but nobody cares about johnny baking the apocalypse cake ... really nobody.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by captain normal on Saturday November 27 2021, @04:36PM (2 children)
Wow...where is the "Nutty Fruitcake" Mod when you need it.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:59PM
I've been longing for the [-1 TuringTestFail] mod.
--
"Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" - Styx [どうもありがとうミスターロボット]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @08:44PM
you're like one of 3 that bothered to login to comment? consider yourself important much?
but enough ad hominem ...
i agree that from a militarly legacy point of view the situation is"fruitcaked-up".
what's the point in a military defending "borders", " culture/way-of-life", "a people", if all and any civilian can be turned into " enemy combatents", which a lab grown virus unleashed on all and any global human population can do?
basically, turn everyone infected into a zombie, just with the difference that they don't crave brainzzz? or would you not consider the virus "the enemy" and it can live in all humans?
maybe someone can tell covid to respect borders please? and culture? and money? and the other stuff a nations military is defending?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:53PM
What could possibly go wrong? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 28 2021, @02:49AM
Don't forget Israel - the U.S. proxy for all weapons too controversial to openly develop in North America...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:50PM (6 children)
We need lockdowns with massive contact tracing. You can't vaccinate your way out of this one. The CCP has the right idea.
I'm also still waiting for the virus to mutate to be less lethal, as if you can simply command a virus, "become endemic!" and you'll get just a variation on seasonal flu. (Protip: Cnut was trying to demonstrate that rulers can't command nature!)
The longer this goes on, the more being liberated from Third Term Trump (2024 - ??) by the Chinese Communist Party sounds like... well I'm still not sure, but as we can see, white racial socialism in one country is an utter failure. The white race is doomed! If science supposedly made whites great, then why do they turn their backs on science and let Chinese racial socialism in one country upstage them? Madness all around.
Whites can't seem to get their act together, so I'm going to stick with garlic, green leafy vegetables packed with vitamin C, and other highly nutritious foods like rice and beans along with regular exercise.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday November 27 2021, @08:18PM (5 children)
LOL I live in a country that's not even allowed to have national borders or border control at all.
As long as there's a situation like that the disease will never, ever, go away. Then again, maybe the fascistic lockdowns won't go away ever, and that's the end goal, not a temporary problem.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @09:40PM
"LOL I live in a country that's not even allowed to have national borders or border control at all."
I see. I wasn't aware you lived in Europe. For the longest time, I thought you were some sort of MAGA-type American. My mistake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:19PM
I should have been more clear.
Global. Lockdowns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:32AM
More like communist lockdowns. Fascists do things with more panache.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @12:50PM
Lord please let willfull stupidity become a terminal illness! Very Lame Misogynist needs something real to rage about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @11:24PM
And which weird nation is that? Are you in Crimea or something?
If you are trying to BS your way for EU, you are dead wrong
https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/schengen-area/temporary-reintroduction-border-control_en [europa.eu]
Sorry to break your alt-reality bubble -- EU nations in Schengen Zone retain ability to close their borders.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:51PM (16 children)
I didn't know there are soooo many virologists, scientists, and expert-level doctors here on soylentnews! Maybe before the virus they were cleverly disguised as average internet idiots?
(Score: 2) by https on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:01PM (3 children)
If I spent a year and a half with half my "news" being about hockey, I imagine I could carry on an intelligent conversation about the chances of the Buffallo Sabres. I might even be incentivized to spell it correctly.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:55PM (2 children)
I watch lots of movies so I would be a great movie director. I eat lots so I would be a great chef. I saw lots of news about viruses so I am a great virologist...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:35AM
You sound like a very stable genius.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @09:01PM
Hmm well I watched a lot of porn so... i don't want to be a director of that, though, but I think I could make a great paid participant! Unless I am calling the shots, so to speak.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:05PM (8 children)
I understand that the capabilities to read, count, and reason, are beyond the reach of average leftie. Nevertheless, people with education in hard sciences or engineering are required to be capable of all that. No anointment from The Great Leftie Overlord needed to exercise those completely mundane skills.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:50PM (4 children)
arts majors (aka lefties) are expected to at least read and reason.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:32AM (1 child)
Being expected to parrot is rather the polar opposite of being expected to reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @05:55PM
Could not that apply either either way?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:37AM (1 child)
science majors (aka lefties) are expected to at least read and reason.
not met a rightie in any of the sciences except fuck you science boy clean the test tubes or whatever.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @06:42AM
Never observed a leftie not lying.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:28AM (2 children)
Hope you are able to take down those Jewish Space Lasers before MTG tries to suck yer cock. I hear she has rows and rows of tiny razor teeth.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:35AM (1 child)
Hope you are able to ask your handler for a less stale copypaste real soon.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @12:55PM
My handler is your mom. She knows just how to handle muh balls, soo good. She even got vaccinated cause she wants me to be safe. She regrets not aborting you and waiting for my superior semen.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @03:26AM (2 children)
Your comment reminded me of what happened at our school board meeting when they were scheduled to talk about mandates. One of the conservative people who just got on the school board went on and on about all this stuff about vaccines and epidemiology and all that sort of stuff decidedly out of her depth. She presented her mathematical model about what the virus was going to do. The board then had a representative from health department present the state's model. He even directly addressed some of her concerns and remarks. He finishes the presentation and before anyone else could even ask a question or thank him, she said "I think this is all a load of sh- crap." There was a somewhat heated exchange from the board members, until she finally said "I don't know how you can think that. It makes no sense to me and a lot of people here." One of the other members immediately quipped, "Did you finally learn how to do your 5th grader's math homework since the last time you complained about how it made no sense to you here? Maybe when you figure that out, you'll have a better chance of understanding this."
That's when it hit me about how we have all these people, including some in my own family, who became "experts" overnight in all these complicated things that real experts spend half a life time learning. Literally, I wouldn't trust these "experts" to do their own children's math homework correctly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @06:53AM
Indeed. AC, meet Dunning-Kruger effect. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @12:47PM
Some people become musical virtuosos in 2 years, others spend a lifetime learning to play an instrument.
Is that Mr Flip-Flop Fauci, the CDC or the WHO?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:14PM (9 children)
a variant that kills 10+% of the unvaccinated, while killing nobody who took the shot.
Hell, lets bump that up to 20+%. I only know 1 unvaxxed person, and she is 100% anti-vaccinations for anything, let alone Covid. I would miss her, but if she died due to Covid, Smalpox, Polio, or whatever I would still snicker at her funeral.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:27PM (1 child)
Yes we can dream. Unfortunately, reality has not complied.
If vaccines are of such singular importance, why were schools opened before children could be fully vaccinated?
We're not even using vaccination seriously. It lends credibility to VLM's theory that shooting up vaxxx is like heroin. A drug pusher pushing drugs isn't a robust pandemic solution, and it appears to not even be a flimsy one for COVID either.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:23AM
Well, a bunch of us have vaxxed up, and well, it's not like heroin. So reality fails to lend credibility.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @10:37PM (1 child)
And then you go and tell people that vaccination is "to save their life", and somehow act surprised when they laugh in your face.
Seems the last thinning out the Übermenschen was too long ago; a new crop of cretins grew up since and is fruiting the same bullshit.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @06:46AM
Here ya go, ya little simp! Have some ivermectin. It'll make you feel better!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @11:16PM (3 children)
Do you realize there was basically no difference in all cause mortality during the RCTs? If anything slightly more died in the vaccinated groups:
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2113017 Supplementary Appendix
https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2113017/suppl_file/nejmoa2113017_appendix.pdf [nejm.org]
See table S19, p. 53
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2110345 Supplementary Appendix
https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345/suppl_file/nejmoa2110345_appendix.pdf [nejm.org]
See table S4, p. 11
And for Pfizer the FDA has updated the data to be 21 vs 17 deaths in vaccinated vs. not.
https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download [fda.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @01:34PM (1 child)
Quit being so fact-based! You'll make the 'tards who think unvaccinated should all die scream and cry and gnash their teeth and croak from apoplectic fits!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @04:44PM
I have no doubt that 99% of the "snotnoses" and "joe merchants" out there will continue on spreading their misinformation, but perhaps 0.5% will be given pause and another 0.5% will accept reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @01:43AM
+1 Informative for a post where 2/3rds of the links don't work and the one where it does the conclusion is "None of the deaths were considered related to vaccination." LOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @09:09PM
What we need is a health care system that properly assessess the costs to society--such as our monthly premiums for insurance coverage -- and have a healthcare system which refuses to treat covid infected people that had no legit reason to refuse vaccination and got sick despite all the warnings and all evidence and all the everything everyone knows is true.
Let such people that refused prevention, and now demand to be cured... to cure themselves via however they choose to pay their own way. And if they can't, let them gofund themselves back to health in the comforts of private healthcare not funded by taxpayers, not funded by co-workers, and not funded by me.