All things CoronaVirus

[seacoaster]

This is what passes, these days, for a reasonable Republican:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... p-1263967/

Maybe she's just a clever MOFO. Maybe she just knows that exceptionally few of the Fox viewers will ever watch her or see her anywhere else, so she feels comfortable blathering her bullsh*t on Fox and trying to appear at least a little thoughtful on CNN.

[kramerica.inc]

From the Post this AM:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... RXBVCRLCTI

"What do we know about the new variant?

Omicron’s genetic profile is unique from other circulating variants, meaning it represents a new lineage of the virus.

It is distinct from other variants in another critical way: There’s a greater number of mutations. Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa, said there are more than 30 mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that binds to human cells, allowing it to gain entry.

Scientists are worried those mutations could make omicron more transmissible and potentially equipped to defy immune defenses, making vaccines less effective. The WHO said Friday that preliminary evidence suggests an “increased risk of reinfection” compared with other variants.

“The one good news, if there’s any good news, is that this variant, the B.1.1.529, can be detected by one particular PCR assay,” de Oliveira said at a news conference, meaning diagnostic labs can quickly identify the new variant.

Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who has conducted mutational scanning experiments for the variant, noted that three mutations could make the virus a more elusive target for antibodies produced through vaccines or prior infection.

“What that’s going to mean for how likely people are to get infected, even if they’ve been vaccinated, it’s too early to say,” Bloom said, noting that more traditional experiments should provide more data. “But having a drop in the antibody neutralization is never a good thing.”

Linda Bauld, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said there were “genuine” causes for concern given that “it does look like a more transmissible variant.” But she added: “I think it’s premature to panic. … There’s just a lot we don’t know at the moment.”

What’s being done to halt the spread of omicron?

Within days of the discovery of the variant, several countries began imposing restrictions on flights to and from South Africa and its neighbors.

Israel closed its borders to “foreigners from all countries.” Australia, Britain, the United States, Japan, Thailand are among nations curbing travel from southern Africa or imposing new quarantine rules for those arriving from the region. The United Kingdom said Saturday that it would require all international travelers to take a PCR test within two days of arrival and quarantine until their test returns a negative result.

The U.S. restrictions will apply to travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi. They do not apply to American citizens and lawful permanent residents. President Biden, in a statement, said the move is “a precautionary measure.” He urged Americans to get vaccinated and get booster shots.

Officials in South Africa expressed concern about the travel bans, while some experts cast doubt on the efficacy of the restrictions, noting that they may be too late. The nation’s health minister, Joe Phaahla, characterized them as a “draconian reaction.”

“It really doesn’t look scientific in any way,” he said. “That kind of reaction is quite a knee-jerk and panicked and almost wants to put a blame on other countries rather than work together.”

Before the novel coronavirus spread through the world, a study published in February 2020 in the Journal of Emergency Management found that a travel ban could delay the arrival of an infectious disease in a country by days or weeks. However, little evidence suggested it eliminated the risk of the virus jumping borders in the long term.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician and professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the measure would do little or nothing to curb the spread of a variant that may have been “spreading for probably several days or weeks before it was noticed.”

Faheem Younus, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Maryland, said that by the time travel bans are imposed, “the new variant has already traveled out of the country.” He noted that the O.R. Tambo International Airport near Johannesburg serves more than 1 million travelers a month.

“These bans also come at a cost and will disincentive other countries in the future,” he said. “‘Why alert the world promptly if that means your people will be punished and your economy crushed?’ they might wonder.”

More on the new variant:

South African doctor who first spotted the Covid omicron variant says symptoms seem ‘mild’ so far

-Covid symptoms linked to the new omicron variant have been described as “extremely mild” by the South African doctor who first raised the alarm over the new strain.
-Dr. Angelique Coetzee told the BBC on Sunday that the patients seen so far have had “extremely mild symptoms.”
-The WHO has said it will take weeks to understand how the variant may affect diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/29/omicron ... o-far.html

[jhu72]

Public service announcement from pediatricians.

[Farfromgeneva]

Public service announcement from pediatricians.

Just came back from getting my kids their second shots. They were a lot tougher than the first round a few weeks back. Despite me telling them it was a horse needle in the butt for shot #2.

But then I took them to a dope Mexican joint I described to them as the Coco spot and got them ice cream after they hated dinner (too Mexican for their tastes)

[CU88]

Wonderful story of Volvos 3 point seatbelt innovation, walking away from millions, after spending millions.

Capitalism With A Conscience—Volvo’s Great Act of Generosity
Volvo patented the designs; standard industrial practice, to protect their investment from copy-cats. Good patents offer you a defensible advantage over rivals—twenty years of monopoly rights in the U.S., for example. Having claimed this prize, Volvo were in a position to charge significant license fees to rivals, or indeed, to promote their cars as the safest on the road, by retaining exclusivity.

Remarkably, however, Volvo did neither, but made Bohlin's patent immediately available to all. Having sponsored the R&D, they gifted their designs to competitors, to encourage mass adoption and to save lives.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbel ... 61dad222bc

I found this fitting:

"Innovations like this can require many millions of dollars in research and development and marketing investment. Of course, Volvo went to great lengths to test the efficacy of this invention in the 1950s and 1960s, running hundreds of experiments, and researching tens of thousands of accidents to verify the efficacy. But giving people scientific data is not enough to persuade them to make a change in their lives. Mass adoption very often requires an emotional (or cultural) paradigm shift."

[Bart]

Interesting article from Nature from September. Scientists looked at convalescent plasma and 2 shot vaccine efficiency regarding a constructed mutation of COVID. Using previous data on mutations and what not.....they found that a total of 20 mutations resulted in a huge decrease in efficacy of both convalescent plasma and 2 shot mRNA plasma. Interestingly they found that someone who had previously had COVID and was vaccinated retained efficacy (for the most part)

Questions
1) Has the variant reached this mutation threshold?
2) Are these mutations the correct one? ....the 20 mutation did have some effect on viral fitness
3) The study did not look at an additional booster. Since every time you have a shot of the vaccine you are introducing new sites for antibody generation you increase the number of polyclonal antibodies. Will this look like the polyclonal antibodies of a COVID + vaccine plasma?

Here is the paper for you to read yourselves...https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04005-0 "High genetic barrier to SARS-CoV-2 polyclonal neutralizing antibody escape"

[youthathletics]

Interesting article from Nature from September. Scientists looked at convalescent plasma and 2 shot vaccine efficiency regarding a constructed mutation of COVID. Using previous data on mutations and what not.....they found that a total of 20 mutations resulted in a huge decrease in efficacy of both convalescent plasma and 2 shot mRNA plasma. Interestingly they found that someone who had previously had COVID and was vaccinated retained efficacy (for the most part)

Questions
1) Has the variant reached this mutation threshold?
2) Are these mutations the correct one? ....the 20 mutation did have some effect on viral fitness
3) The study did not look at an additional booster. Since every time you have a shot of the vaccine you are introducing new sites for antibody generation you increase the number of polyclonal antibodies. Will this look like the polyclonal antibodies of a COVID + vaccine plasma?

Here is the paper for you to read yourselves...https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04005-0 "High genetic barrier to SARS-CoV-2 polyclonal neutralizing antibody escape"

Thanks.....Fingers crossed, nature is working her magic. As new mutations occur, they become less impactful.

[wgdsr]

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellne ... orm-687300

omicron from a boosted to a boosted, supposedly. 1st doc w symptoms also attended several large conferences, operated on 7? people, contact w whoever else. that's a lot of contact for one dude. omicron has probably had a decent size runway already, no pun intended on the travel bans.

[Bart]

Interesting article from Nature from September. Scientists looked at convalescent plasma and 2 shot vaccine efficiency regarding a constructed mutation of COVID. Using previous data on mutations and what not.....they found that a total of 20 mutations resulted in a huge decrease in efficacy of both convalescent plasma and 2 shot mRNA plasma. Interestingly they found that someone who had previously had COVID and was vaccinated retained efficacy (for the most part)

Questions
1) Has the variant reached this mutation threshold?
2) Are these mutations the correct one? ....the 20 mutation did have some effect on viral fitness
3) The study did not look at an additional booster. Since every time you have a shot of the vaccine you are introducing new sites for antibody generation you increase the number of polyclonal antibodies. Will this look like the polyclonal antibodies of a COVID + vaccine plasma?

Here is the paper for you to read yourselves...https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04005-0 "High genetic barrier to SARS-CoV-2 polyclonal neutralizing antibody escape"

Thanks.....Fingers crossed, nature is working her magic. As new mutations occur, they become less impactful.

That is not always true. Mutations occur. Some are impactful and some are not. Some increase fitness and some do not. Some increase virulence and some do not. You get the idea.

Here is an interesting tweet string from Carl Bergstrom on this topic. Agree with him or not there are some good references in it.

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status ... 8006982656

He paraphrases an article in this string which sums it up tremendously " To paraphrase and generalize, virulence is often not so much a matter of evolutionary fine-tuning as a matter of "sczhit happens."

[Kismet]

Scott Gottleib this AM on CNBC
There’s reason to be optimistic current boosted vaccines will provide meaningful protection against #Omicron - based on both evaluation of new sequence, prior experience with strains with some immune escape, as well as emerging clinical feedback from RSA. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... a9efe86f99

"Data show vax can maintain clinical effectiveness against strains w/immune escape even when neutralization declines a lot in test tube studies. Breadth, diversity of antibodies also matter. Boosters broaden antibody response, generating antibodies that target more sites on virus."

"If a new booster is eventually needed to specifically target #Omicron, it can move very fast. Commercial scale manufacturing can begin, at risk, while new vax is still undergoing full development and review. U.S. will know soon if we might need such a backstop. It can be ready."

Pfizer CEO was positive that they could have an improved vaccine within 100 days in need be. Moderna CEO also indicated they could quickly do a revised dose but was a bit more negative in the short term (which tanked the market futures Tuesday)

When discussing that early data on Omicron seems to point towards less virulence and mild cases - I was struck hearing from Natalie Azar, MD on NBC last night that the primary function of a virus is to replicate and killing its hosts actually insures its own destruction, so that she indicated that Omicron might be possibly be less virulent but more/as contagious than Delta. If its less contagious than Delta it will get squeezed out rather quickly. She also suggested that time is needed to ascertain the details as there have been previous variants that were initially concerning but that turned out to not be as big a deal as initially thought.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellne ... orm-687300

omicron from a boosted to a boosted, supposedly. 1st doc w symptoms also attended several large conferences, operated on 7? people, contact w whoever else. that's a lot of contact for one dude. omicron has probably had a decent size runway already, no pun intended on the travel bans.

Gets back to my Spring 2020 belief that by the time it’s noticeable, it’s already a big problem.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... -estimates

[PizzaSnake]

Public service announcement from pediatricians.

Just came back from getting my kids their second shots. They were a lot tougher than the first round a few weeks back. Despite me telling them it was a horse needle in the butt for shot #2.

But then I took them to a dope Mexican joint I described to them as the Coco spot and got them ice cream after they hated dinner (too Mexican for their tastes)

You told them it had chocolate (well, cacao) in the sauce, and then they brought out the mole…

[seacoaster]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... -estimates

Yeah, shocking. But we knew it was likely being undercounted in some of the world and un-counted in many parts of the world.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... -estimates

Yeah, shocking. But we knew it was likely being undercounted in some of the world and un-counted in many parts of the world.

Yep. We are just above 801,000 in this country.

[Farfromgeneva]

Public service announcement from pediatricians.

Just came back from getting my kids their second shots. They were a lot tougher than the first round a few weeks back. Despite me telling them it was a horse needle in the butt for shot #2.

But then I took them to a dope Mexican joint I described to them as the Coco spot and got them ice cream after they hated dinner (too Mexican for their tastes)

You told them it had chocolate (well, cacao) in the sauce, and then they brought out the mole…

Tried that before with my daughter. Was afraid to close my eyes to sleep that night with the poisonous look she gave me after she stopped crying from the taste.

Worse was she loves shredded pork but wouldn’t touch the tamale I got her, cried when I told her the soup of mine she tried had goat as the meat and told me the pork belly taco (I know not legit Mexican but pork belly and my mouth and tight son!).

Then got mad I didn’t just get her a quesadilla and that the queso dip was too funny tasting not the right cheese.

Expensive way to fail epically. Though I enjoyed my food.

[wgdsr]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... -estimates

if you keep this up, you're gonna run into a real problem with folks that say we've done far worse than about anywhere in the world.

actually haven't checked in a couple weeks, how's europe doing most recently?

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... -estimates

if you keep this up, you're gonna run into a real problem with folks that say we've done far worse than about anywhere in the world.

actually haven't checked in a couple weeks, how's europe doing most recently?

I haven’t been keeping up with death counts lately….and haven’t aggregated all of the European countries…..been watching hoops. Banchero is the real deal. Karl Malone with a handle or Ben Simmons with a jumper! Emoni Bates has not developed. I never liked his game and like it even less now.

[jhu72]

Anecdotal evidence coming out of South Africa indicates Omicron isn't causing much issue with vaccinated people. Vast majority of cases are among the unvaccinated. Only 36% of South Africans are fully vaccinated.

[kramerica.inc]

South African omicron variant symptoms seem ‘mild’ so far

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/29/omicron ... o-far.html

Omicron variant in Europe Mild or asymptomatic:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ses-so-far