Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Granyala]

Stop with the bullshit. Every single human is vulnerable to the virus as far as we know. Even the vaccinated. And the unvaccinated are incubators for variants that may escape the vaccine’s protection. I get you want to pretend people who don’t get vaccinated by choice are somehow not hurting anyone but themselves, but that’s inaccurate.

I am saying that the risk is small enough to not make a mountain out of a mole hill.
So far, the gathered scientific data supports that assessment. We only need to get more people to vaccinate and include currently unavailable groups like teens.

There is a reason why you do not need 100% for herd immunity.

[shimerra]

I am saying that the risk is small enough to not make a mountain out of a mole hill.
So far, the gathered scientific data supports that assessment. We only need to get more people to vaccinate and include currently unavailable groups like teens.

There is a reason why you do not need 100% for herd immunity.

While it's not needed to be %100 the more infectious/transmissible the virus is the closer it needs to be to that number. And unless you have a valid medical reason anyone, and people like you who defend those who are resistant, remain a problem that is allowing variants like the Delta variant to take holf rendering the efforts of those who did get vaccinated less useful by the day. And as new variants, like Delta, continue to emerge due to vaccine hesitancy that number goes up.

So far the gathered scientific data shows that vaccinate hesitancy and misinformation are setting us back significantly. Your statement is only true until the number of people who aren't vaccinated is much smaller in the case of this virus.

[Ursus]

Just get a grip on reality here.

1) You CANNOT force everyone to vaccinate.
2) You CANNOT keep these measures up indefinitely. Eventually people will revolt (especially in regards to social distancing).
3) The virus is not going away.

We can't force everyone to vaccinate, but we can make it as undesirable as possible to not be vaccinated.

While Covid in its current form doesn't pose much threat to vaccinated people, every new infection is another roll of the dice that could lead to a new variant that does pose a threat to vaccinated people and we'll be back to square one.

[Gaidax]

Just get a grip on reality here.

1) You CANNOT force everyone to vaccinate.
2) You CANNOT keep these measures up indefinitely. Eventually people will revolt (especially in regards to social distancing).
3) The virus is not going away.

Just accept the fact that we will have to live with the risk eventually. Take the vaccine, be done with it.

This is true.

No matter what you do, it will be hard to break above ~70% vaccinated and yes at some point soon we will just have to accept it being a thing and go on with out lives.

I do hope that effective treatment will be invented as well.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I mean at this point I kind of hope we get like.. to the zeta variant that is flesh eating and people start melting in the streets without a shot. Then we will see how true they are to their believes.

[beanman12345]

We can't force everyone to vaccinate, but we can make it as undesirable as possible to not be vaccinated.

While Covid in its current form doesn't pose much threat to vaccinated people, every new infection is another roll of the dice that could lead to a new variant that does pose a threat to vaccinated people and we'll be back to square one.

Yup, and we can and should, and will mandate it in places like school, many colleges are already doing this, and that'll expand exponentially to all levels once these vaccines fully pass FDA regulations. That's effectively how we got rid of polio and expand that and now it only exists in 2 countries in the entire world. And hell even the increase in measles cases a couple years back in the US at least is paltry in comparison to what it would be without vaccine mandates. But now we can add mandates in other places, like travel mandates at the federal level, every country should adopt this, want to travel between countries, need vaccine. Do other things like this.

Not forced, as you said, the option to not participate in these things is always there. There will still be people unvaccinated as there always has been, but just make it as inconvenient and undesirable as possible, and then we reach herd immunity where the people who are immune can naturally protect those that aren't because the chance of mutation is essentially gone.

[Rasulis]

I mean at this point I kind of hope we get like.. to the zeta variant that is flesh eating and people start melting in the streets without a shot. Then we will see how true they are to their believes.

Epsilon variant mutations help spur COVID immune evasion

The good news for the vaccinated is that it is being wiped out by the Delta variant which has a much higher transmissibility and replication rate. Apparently brute force won over stealth. Bad news for the unvaccinated however. At this point it is not even considered a variant of concern by WHO.

BTW, the reproduction number for the original Covid-19 strain was around 2.4-2.6, the one for Alpha is 3.6-4.2, and for delta, it is 5.6-6.7. Big jump in transmissibility. With an R of 2.5, the threshold for herd immunity is 60%, but with an R of 6, it is 83%

Three mutations in the Epsilon coronavirus spike protein dampen the neutralizing potency of antibodies induced by current vaccines or past COVID infections.

The mutations give this coronavirus variant of concern a means to totally evade specific monoclonal antibodies used in clinics and reduces the effectiveness of antibodies from the plasma of vaccinated people.

To better understand the exact immune escape strategies at work here, the scientists visualized this variant’s infection machinery to see what is different from the original configuration of the pandemic coronavirus, and what the implications of these changes are.

The international project was led by David Veesler’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle and by Luca Piccoli and Davide Corti of Vir Biotechnology.

For several years, the Veesler lab and its collaborators have been exploring the molecular conformation and infection mechanics of SARS-like coronaviruses. They also examine how antibodies attempt to block infection mechanisms, and how variants come up with new dodges.

Their latest data shows that the Epsilon variant “relies on an indirect and unusual neutralization-escape strategy,” according to the researchers.

Their findings are published as a First Release paper in the latest edition of Science. Read the paper.

A molecular clock analysis timed the emergence of the precursor to the Epsilon variant to May of 2020 in California. By summer of 2020 it had diverged into its B.1.427/B.1.429 lineages. COVID cases from the variant increased quickly, and the variant soon became widespread in the United States. It has now been reported in at least 34 other countries.

To learn more about the characteristics of the Epsilon variant, the researchers tested the resilience against the Epsilon variant of plasma from people who were exposed the virus, as well as vaccinated people. The neutralizing potency of the plasma against the Epsilon variant of concern was reduced about 2 to 3.5 fold.

Like the original SARS-CoV-2, the variant infects target cells through its spike glycoprotein – the structure that crowns the surface of the virus. The researchers found that the Epsilon mutations were responsible for rearrangements in critical areas of the spike glycoprotein; electron cryomicroscopy studies showed structural changes in these areas. Visualizing these mutations help explain why antibodies had difficulty binding to the spike glycoprotein.

One of the three mutations in the Epsilon variant affected the receptor binding domain on the spike glycoprotein. This mutation reduced the neutralizing activity of 14 out of 34 neutralizing antibodies specific to that domain, including clinical stage antibodies.

The other two of the three mutations in the variant affected the N-terminal domain on the spike glycoprotein. The researchers used mass spectrometry and structural analysis to find that a part of the coronavirus N-terminal domain was remodeled by these mutations. The signal peptide cleavage site was shifted in the NTD antigenic supersite, and a new disulphide bond was formed. This resulted in a total loss of neutralization by 10 out of 10 antibodies tested specific to the N-terminal domain in the spike glycoprotein.

The scientist believed that uncovering mechanisms of immune evasion, such as this newfound mechanism based on signal peptide modification, is as important as variant surveillance through RNA sequencing. Together, they note, such efforts could help to successfully counter the ongoing pandemic.

The lead scientists on this project were Matthew McCallum and Alexandra C. Walls of the UW School of Medicine Department of Biochemistry; Jessica Bassi and Anna de Marco of Humabs Biomed; and Alex Chen of Vir Biotechnology.

This study was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (DP1AI158186 and HHSN272201700059C, U01 AI151698-01), Pew Biomedical Scholars Award, Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Fast Grants, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Pasteur Institute.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Olivia Guidry: Louisiana Nurse Dies of COVID-19 Complications, Family Says

Guidry died in the intensive care unit at Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center, where she worked, after battling COVID-19 complications for several days, according to now-private Facebook posts from her sister that chronicled her illness. Guidry was moved to the ICU on July 7, several days after being diagnosed with coronavirus, her sister said, after her fever spiked and she suffered a seizure. She was intubated that day. Her sister said her chest X-ray showed minor pneumonia.

Her sister, Brittany Smith, said doctors initially thought they would be able to wean her off of the ventilator, but she was then placed into a medically induced coma on the morning of July 8 because she was showing signs of brain damage, swelling and fluid on the brain. According to her sister’s posts, an infectious disease doctor believed Guidry was in a cytokine storm and she was treated with high-dose steroids and antibodies.

Ashleigh Clark, wrote on Facebook on July 10, “Thank you everyone for the prayers. We are waiting for more test results at this time and waiting to hear from Olivia’s neurologist. We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of prayer for Olivia and our family. She made it through the night last night. We are now waiting on tests to be done to determine what type of brain activity she has. Doctors will be doing an EEG and breathing test. She has been weaned off sedation meds so they can see if she is breathing in her own. I ask that everyone share and update friends and family from this post. Please continue to pray that God will do a miracle in Olivia Guidry. We are believing and standing alongside each of you.”

Clark then updated her post and said, “Olivia has passed away. Please pray for her family, especially her parents and sister. I can’t even believe this is real. To know her was to love her.”

According to posts from 2019 on Guidry’s Facebook page, she had a pre-existing heart condition. She wrote in September 2019, “So we did testing on Tuesday at the Mayo Clinic to see the impact that my fistula is having on my heart. They stuck a catheter through my neck, down to my heart. They took blood samples from each chamber laying down and then had me to an extensive workout on a bike. At my peak workout, they took more blood samples to test oxygenation. At this time, no intervention is needed and they said my heart passed the test with flying colors. They found that I did indeed have a fistula on my R coronary artery AND a patent foramen ovale (something that should close shortly after birth). They said my pressures in my chambers were excellent. He said one of my numbers were 1.3 and needed to be 1.5 to operate. THANKFULLY, everything went okay because I would have had to have OPEN HEART surgery then and there. He states he does not believe the fistula is causing my shortness of breath due to the test results. So, we still have a mystery on our hands but also have a huge blessing. Thank you for all of your prayers and support.”

Ochsner Health, where Guidry worked, began offering the vaccine to its employees in December 2020. In January 2021, the company’s president and CEO, Warner Thomas, expressed surprise that at the time, less than half of workers in the hospital system had been vaccinated. He told the Louisiana Illuminator, “I would’ve thought we’d be higher (than 49.1 percent). We offered it pretty widely early on to a lot of folks, and honestly now it’s more difficult (to inoculate staff) because we’ve got a lot of patients we’re trying to take care of.” Thomas said at the time that the company’s priority had shifted from getting employees vaccinated to providing the vaccine to patients. He said he thought vaccine hesitancy would be going down as healthcare workers saw “are seeing their colleagues getting vaccinated more and more.”

Robert Hart, the chief medical officer at Ochsner, told the news site there was some unfounded concern among younger employees about how the vaccine would impact fertility, telling the Illuminator, “Because of all the false information on the internet about fertility, our workforce does have a lot of young staff that have concerns about that.” He added that Ochsner had, “continued to spend a lot of time educating” employees about the safety of the vaccine.

https://heavy.com/news/olivia-guidry/

Seriously we need to be done with trying to push or force anyone about vaccines at this point. It's not ignorance anymore at this point it is a choice and there is no cure for it. No way am I going to worry about full grown adults that make a choice.

I am more concerned with just stepping out of the way and keeping those that do care to live.

[Granyala]

You said only a small fraction are susceptible. That’s bullshit.

So you honestly want to tell me that vaccinated are as susceptible to C19 as non vaccinated?
Stop trolling, there is clear data that refutes that.

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and people like you who defend those who are resistant

Reading comprehension: failed.
I never defended these people, I stated, as a fact, that there is simply no way to ever achieve 100%, because you will not be able to convince some, no matter what you do. I'm advocating, that once the time comes, we stop playing it safe for the sake of these people.

Also, do keep in mind that we are a global population.
A few diehards in the US won't be as much of a problem as a 3rd world country with nonexistent vaccination rate. It'll be very interesting to see whether we manage to bring those up to herd immunity. Yah I'm not holding my breath on that one.

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This is true.

No matter what you do, it will be hard to break above ~70% vaccinated and yes at some point soon we will just have to accept it being a thing and go on with out lives.

I do hope that effective treatment will be invented as well.

Thank God, at least someone understands me.

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Robert Hart, the chief medical officer at Ochsner, told the news site there was some unfounded concern among younger employees about how the vaccine would impact fertility, telling the Illuminator, “Because of all the false information on the internet about fertility, our workforce does have a lot of young staff that have concerns about that.” He added that Ochsner had, “continued to spend a lot of time educating” employees about the safety of the vaccine.

I've heard this too, no idea where this fertility nonsense comes from but I have a young female co-worker that refused vaccination because of it. Oo
I mean I can understand young women bein weary of AZ due to the blood clot issue but mRNA should be fairly safe.

[Al Gorefiend]

Would scientists perhaps be interested in DNA samples from me or something? Still resoundingly healthy and travelling again without the vaccination. Maybe I've got some kind of Lacks cells thing going on here.

[Masark]

Maybe I've got some kind of Lacks cells thing going on here.

Cancerous you mean? Probably.

[Forogil]

Epsilon variant mutations help spur COVID immune evasion

The good news for the vaccinated is that it is being wiped out by the Delta variant which has a much higher transmissibility and replication rate. Apparently brute force won over stealth. Bad news for the unvaccinated however. At this point it is not even considered a variant of concern by WHO.

WHO view Epsilon as a former Variant of Interest (a lower rating), as far as I can see it never stepped up to a variant of concern in their view.
But CDC had it as a variant of concern, which means that it is as confusing as normal. Note that CDC not only downclassed it because it was declining, but also because it turned out that vaccines and treatments worked against it.

[szechuan]

[lonely zergling]

Kinda scary that some reckless people want to vaccinate kids. The risk / benefit ratio is terrible for them personally, we shouldnt put them at a risk just to reach a certain % goal.

[Elegiac]

The vaccines at the least will reduce the severity of illness and those who get it that aren't vaccinated will get really sick. But I'm getting weary of the mask mandates and at some point we just need to cut the cord and accept that the people who refuse to get vaccinated shouldn't be protected from their own ignorance and stupidity and the rest of us should move on.

Okay. And the people who have legitimate medical reasons for not being vaccinated should just fuckin' die I guess?

Vaccination is a matter of public health, not personal health.

[Flarelaine]

Kinda scary that some reckless people want to vaccinate kids. The risk / benefit ratio is terrible for them personally, we shouldnt put them at a risk just to reach a certain % goal.

Can you supply a source for that risk/benefit ratio?

[szechuan]

Kinda scary that some reckless people want to vaccinate kids. The risk / benefit ratio is terrible for them personally, we shouldnt put them at a risk just to reach a certain % goal.

Wrong.

/10chars

[Granyala]

Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. More than 331 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through July 6, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 5,946 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.

And here the trust issue rears it's ugly head. That women simply doesn't trust the last sentence.

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Kinda scary that some reckless people want to vaccinate kids. The risk / benefit ratio is terrible for them personally, we shouldnt put them at a risk just to reach a certain % goal.

I have heard medical personnel in official media say that it is unclear whether kiddos < 12yrs old benefit enough to warrant the vaccine.
They are currently investigating whether Kiddos can get long Covid, since that may shift the risk/benefit ratio in favor of the vaccine.

I think they are cautious because there isn't much data regarding child vaccination right now.

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Okay. And the people who have legitimate medical reasons for not being vaccinated should just fuckin' die I guess?

They are protected by the herd immunity, as with every other illness, including the flu.

[Elegiac]

They are protected by the herd immunity, as with every other illness, including the flu.

Which they aren't in western countries due to a combination of vaccine resistance and people refusing to wear masks during a pandemic or when they are sick, thus making epidemics more likely to spread and lockdowns less effective. Womp womp.

Once again, this is a matter of public health not individual choices.

[Granyala]

Which they aren't in western countries due to a combination of vaccine resistance

Not yet, but they will be.
Currently officials here do not see vaccine resistance as much of a problem, they still estimate the diehards at ~10%.

Problems right now are: adolescents (STIKO recommendations unclear, working on it), Kiddos (no recommendation except with preexisting conditions), economic migrants that do not speak our language and require extra effort to get into the boat.

Once the above is taken care of, we will be close enough to not wear stupid masks for the rest of our lives.