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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

28 Nov 2021 10:06

I know but why isn't it possible to invent a type of vaccine that can change to respond to mutations of the virus it's supposed to treat.  I read that research was being done to develop a universal flu vaccine, it has to have some capacity to respond to all the different variants to be able to do this.
I think you're misunderstanding what it means for the vaccine to "respond" to different variants. The vaccine does not stay in the body and change according to how viruses change (that would be an extremely bad idea.) Rather, the vaccine is designed to trigger an immune system response that is more broadly sensitive to a particular type of virus. So even as the virus mutates, the immune system doesn't care, because it recognizes something about the virus that does not change. It would be like training a program to recognize the word recognize, even if it's in a different color and italicized.

Such a vaccine may or may not be feasible with SARS-CoV-2. I imagine it is still an area of very active research. Indeed, since the pandemic started there were many different methods used to try to develop a vaccine for it. Some were effective, others not so much. There could still be room for improvements.
Oh, I see thanks Wat....I was wondering how this new universal vaccine (which is now in Phase 2 human trials!) would be able to work against so many strains of the flu, and it looks like they're now also working on one for covid but that will likely be many years down the road.  I think I worded it wrong....I was thinking of a vaccine with a genetic component that causes the antibodies to change depending on the variant they are dealing with.  But the way you described it, there's always some kind of biomarker that does not change so if it could grab onto that, that would make it work against a broad range of variants, so that would be much better with less risk.  It almost sounds like an AI vaccine if it works in the way you describe, and I've been wondering when we'd have nanotechnology enter the world of vaccines.
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

28 Nov 2021 12:49

Possible, but not the most likely.
Not likely for this particular variant. but is it likely to happen eventually?
This also raises the question, setting ethics and "what could possibly go wrong" aside, whether it's possible to engineer the virus into such a suicide variant?
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

28 Nov 2021 20:38

Possible, but not the most likely.
Not likely for this particular variant. but is it likely to happen eventually?
This also raises the question, setting ethics and "what could possibly go wrong" aside, whether it's possible to engineer the virus into such a suicide variant?
Just as an aside, there was actually a testing facility off of Long Island on Plum Island where the military was working with different viruses.  I remember the KGB did much the same thing in the Caucasus.  The US military abandoned the facility when reports of mutated dogs (test subjects?) washed ashore on Long Island (look up "Montauk Monster" lol) and the last I heard the facility was moved to Kansas.  Similar to how the Area 51 military advanced technology testing facility was moved from Nevada to Utah when it garnered too much attention and people saw VTOL aircraft flying straight up from there at night.
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

29 Nov 2021 00:42

look up "Montauk Monster" lol
That's just some heavily decomposed animal.  They can be difficult to identify from a single picture.
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

29 Nov 2021 01:34

An update on Omicron from the WHO. Not much new information yet. Mostly this summarizes what is and isn't known (much more of the latter), but going into a bit more detail on the studies currently being done. We can expect much more information in the next few days to weeks. The WHO is also rather vocal against travel restrictions, since of course it's unrealistic to expect to keep Omicron out. Quite reminiscent of February and March of 2020. Too late to hope for travel restrictions to do much, but most nations did it anyway, thinking they could slow a forest fire by trying to stop more embers from blowing in, when the forest was already on fire.

There is limited evidence that Omicron may cause milder illness, but there are caveats. Most of the new cases in South Africa have been in young people, for whom COVID-19 is usually mild anyway. Most of the cases are also fairly recent, so there has not been much time for severe illness to have shown up yet. There is also limited evidence that Omicron is causing more reinfection for people who recovered from earlier variants (this isn't surprising given the number of mutations, and combined with the increasing proportion of sequenced cases it makes up, motivated the decision to classify it a variant of concern.)
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

29 Nov 2021 15:47

look up "Montauk Monster" lol
That's just some heavily decomposed animal.  They can be difficult to identify from a single picture.
Good news if it's not some poor animal being tested on at the Plum Island facility.  They packed up and left when they got too much media attention.
 
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29 Nov 2021 15:56

An update on Omicron from the WHO. Not much new information yet. Mostly this summarizes what is and isn't known (much more of the latter), but going into a bit more detail on the studies currently being done. We can expect much more information in the next few days to weeks. The WHO is also rather vocal against travel restrictions, since of course it's unrealistic to expect to keep Omicron out. Quite reminiscent of February and March of 2020. Too late to hope for travel restrictions to do much, but most nations did it anyway, thinking they could slow a forest fire by trying to stop more embers from blowing in, when the forest was already on fire.

There is limited evidence that Omicron may cause milder illness, but there are caveats. Most of the new cases in South Africa have been in young people, for whom COVID-19 is usually mild anyway. Most of the cases are also fairly recent, so there has not been much time for severe illness to have shown up yet. There is also limited evidence that Omicron is causing more reinfection for people who recovered from earlier variants (this isn't surprising given the number of mutations, and combined with the increasing proportion of sequenced cases it makes up, motivated the decision to classify it a variant of concern.)
Wat I had been reading on Twitter that the vaccines work fine against Omicron, I guess it is too early to make a statement like that?
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

29 Nov 2021 22:46

Wat I had been reading on Twitter that the vaccines work fine against Omicron, I guess it is too early to make a statement like that?
Yes, too early. Most of the evidence about Omicron's effects is still extremely limited and not very quantitative. I'd suggest waiting for the vaccine makers to test the efficacy of their vaccines against Omicron directly. Those results should be ready in a couple of weeks.

It's extremely unlikely that Omicron evades vaccines completely, but it is quite probable that the efficacy is decreased somewhat. But does that mean something like a 5% reduction, or a 30% reduction, remains to be seen. Those would have very different implications for what countries and vaccine makers do to respond to Omicron.
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

30 Nov 2021 03:07

Wat I had been reading on Twitter that the vaccines work fine against Omicron, I guess it is too early to make a statement like that?
Yes, too early. Most of the evidence about Omicron's effects is still extremely limited and not very quantitative. I'd suggest waiting for the vaccine makers to test the efficacy of their vaccines against Omicron directly. Those results should be ready in a couple of weeks.

It's extremely unlikely that Omicron evades vaccines completely, but it is quite probable that the efficacy is decreased somewhat. But does that mean something like a 5% reduction, or a 30% reduction, remains to be seen. Those would have very different implications for what countries and vaccine makers do to respond to Omicron.
I could see them custom designing new boosters.  Question though, if they do design a booster specifically for this variant, does it make it less effective for previous variants (like Delta for example?) Or is it rather like adding more code to an existing program, and the efficacy of it against previous variants doesn't decrease when it is modified to cover the new?
I'm also wondering how many more variants we can get and will we make it to the end of the Greek alphabet and get to an Omega variant? If that happened it would be so scary....aside from what comes after Omega I had a thought in my head about how symbolic the letter Omega is.  It could be "The One to end them all"..... a zombie virus (many think these are fiction but we actually see zombie parasites in the natural world, there is one that latches onto the brains of ants and makes them attack each other).....imagine if there was ever a human zombie virus like that and it ended up being the Omega variant?  That would almost make it seem like reality is scripted like a movie lol, like everything is leading up to that eventual final climax.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... ombie-ants
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... ie-spiders
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... ated-virus
This last one is especially interesting
In 2014, researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Aix–Marseille Université in France dug a fascinating organism out of the Siberian permafrost: a so-called giant virus, about 30,000 years old, which they named Pithovirus sibericum.
Giant viruses are called this way because, though still tiny, they are easily visible under the microscope. But there is something else that makes P. sibericum stand apart. It is a DNA virus that contains a large number of genes — as many as 500, to be precise.
This is in stark contrast with other DNA viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which only contains about 12 genes in all.
The size of giant viruses, as well as the fact that they contain such a large amount of DNA, can make them particularly dangerous, explain the researchers who discovered P. sibericum since they can stick around for an extremely long time.
“Among known viruses, the giant viruses tend to be very tough, almost impossible to break open,” explain two of the virus’s discoverers, Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, in an interview for National Geographic.
“Special environments such as deep ocean sediments and permafrost are very good preservers of microbes [and viruses] because they are cold, anoxic [oxygen-free], and […] dark,” they add.
When “reanimated, P. sibericum only infected amoebas — archaic unicellular organisms — but happily not humans or other animals. Yet Claverie and Abergel warn that there may be similar giant viruses buried inside the permafrost that could prove dangerous to humans.
Though they have remained safely contained so far, global heating and human action could cause them to resurface and come back to life, which might bring about unknown threats to health.
“Mining and drilling mean […] digging through these ancient layers for the first time in millions of years. If ‘viable’ [viruses] are still there, this is a good recipe for disaster.”
Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

01 Dec 2021 09:06

Some recent numbers from Norway, new cases per 100,000 last week:
Unvaccinated: 698
One dose: 369
Two+ doses: 223

So currently the vaccine seems to make you half as likely to get Covid after one dose and 1/3 as likely after two doses.  I'm noticing that amongst people I know it's not only children now that get covid, but also fully vaccinated adults.

Over the past four weeks 330 (in total) fully vaccinated have been hospitalised versus 233 unvaccinated, and 71% of the population are fully vaccinated, but since few children are fully vaccinated and extremely rarely are hospitalised, it might be more useful to look at the median age, which is 50 years for the unvaccinated and 75 years for the vaccinated.  95% of those over 45 years have protection either through the vaccine or after recovery.  So the vaccine protects somewhat against infection, but seems more potent as protection against severe illness for the middle aged.

Over the past 4 weeks 35 unvaccinated have died with covid (median age 82) versus 124 fully vaccinated (median age 84).  So deaths mostly confined to the very frail.  It's difficult to tell how well the vaccine protects against death, since so many in this age group have been vaccinated and the the most frail have intentionally not been vaccinated precisely because of their health.

And I wouldn't be surprised if there is a big surge of omicron soon.
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02 Dec 2021 07:03

And I wouldn't be surprised if there is a big surge of omicron soon.
And it's loose.  A company in Oslo, but with an office in South Africa, gathered 120 people for Christmas dinner 26th Nov, six days ago, and now about half of them have tested positive for covid.  Omicron has been confirmed.  All present were both fully vaccinated and tested before the event.  Most have symptoms, but only mild symptoms.  This seems to indicate that the vaccines are near useless against getting infected by omicron, and that the tests are not sufficiently sensitive.
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

02 Dec 2021 08:46

And it's loose.  A company in Oslo, but with an office in South Africa, gathered 120 people for Christmas dinner 26th Nov, six days ago, and now about half of them have tested positive for covid.  Omicron has been confirmed.  All present were both fully vaccinated and tested before the event.  Most have symptoms, but only mild symptoms. This seems to indicate that the vaccines are near useless against getting infected by omicron, and that the tests are not sufficiently sensitive. 
Any info on how long ago were they fully vaccinated, and how many received boosters? If most were not boosted and received second dose of an mRNA more than 6 months ago, or J&J more than 2 months ago, then that outbreak appears not much different from what Delta would do. But if most were fully vaccinated or boosted recently, then it's strong evidence that Omicron escapes vaccines much more readily, and consistent with the early evidence from South Africa that infection despite recovery from an earlier variant is common.
 
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

02 Dec 2021 09:48

Any info on how long ago were they fully vaccinated, and how many received boosters?
Since this was company related we can assume that they were between 20 and 65 years old, the vast majority must have received the first dose between June and late August, and the second dose 2 - 2.5 months later.  Boosters are currently only available for 65+ or vulnerable.  So most would probably have received the second dose 2-3 months ago, no boosters (would be too early, anyway).  And we can assume Moderna or Pfizer.  Not J&J.

Sounds to me like pretty good evidence that the vaccines have significant weaknesses with regards to infection, in particular for omicron.  Initial reports suggest that the symptoms are mild, which many will take as evidence that the vaccines give protection, but that might be an assumption only.

So, we're back to restrictions again, for now regionally (including Oslo), starting tomorrow: masks must be worn by 12+ in shops, restaurants, public transport if a distance of 1 m can't be maintained, home office for at least a few days a week if not critical to be in the office, at most 100 people indoor for private events, and at most 600 indoors in groups of 200 for public events.  Nothing about ventilation, as usual.  Sigh.  Unpractical perhaps at this time of year with temperatures around -10C for the Oslo region currently.  And the rules for mandatory isolation after testing positive is getting more and more strict, in particular for the fully vaccinated.  It used to be two days for the fully vaccinated, which was increased to five days last week, and now if omicron is suspected, seven days.  When entering Norway, a test must be taken within 24h (self testing allowed).  This also applies to the vaccinated and recovered.
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

02 Dec 2021 16:24

With Omicron on the rise I wonder how the countries that have introduced laws requiring people to carry covid passes in most public places will respond.  The segregation now gaining popular and political support is extremely scary.  Germany has now made a negative test void for a pass, only vaccination or recovery will do, clearly showing that this has moved away from infection control.  I also just learned that a popular Norwegian Facebook group for people who oppose this segregation and advocate equal rules for everybody, was deleted yesterday by Facebook.  Such support for equality is not accepted.  This is a very scary development.  A move towards totalitarianism with popular support.
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Thread

03 Dec 2021 00:32

Got 5 cases of this omicron variant right here in NY and one of them was someone who was double vaccinated AND boosted in early November.  They held some sort of anime convention in late November, something I wish they hadn't....all such trivial conventions should be held by zoom.

So far from what I can gather, out of the 5 one was double vaccinated + boosted and one was doubly vaccinated but not boosted, dont know about the other 3.

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