Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

>The current mRNA based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are effective at preventing severe outcomes like hospitalization and death

According to this very article this isn't even really true any more. Of the currently hospitalized population in Israel 60% are fully vaccinated. With 78% of the population vaccinated that implies the protection is actually surprisingly weak.

" “There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” says Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) who has consulted on COVID-19 for the government. “One of the big stories from Israel [is]: ‘Vaccines work, but not well enough.’”

The Delta variant emerged prior to widespread vaccination.

So if I'm understanding you:

I am planning on taking my Governor's cheekily endorsed thumbs up to get a 3rd shot. I'm going to get JJ because it's not the same RNA spike target.

That's probably better than a 3rd RNA shot (no reformulated)?

The immune system already does that and its the responsibility of CD4+ helper T-cells.

The 2009 pandemic was significantly blunted because people born before 1957 had partial immunity from cross-reactive T-cells to H1N1 which was endemic in humans from 1918-1957. So after mutating in probably billions of pigs for 50 years the H1N1 virus that hopped back to humans was still sufficiently recognized by the immune system of older people to take any edge off of that pandemic.

I'm also fairly skeptical of the data coming out of Israel about waning immunity. Everyone is taking that data at face value while entirely ignoring the disclaimer: "(Potential confounders include the fact that the very oldest Israelis, with the weakest immune systems, were vaccinated first.)".

We really need a lot better data on much better matched cohorts to determine actual immune waning in the presence of the same viral variant.

Beefing up the immune system without garunteeing it something to do seems like a recipe for autoimmune disorders, no?

Wearing a mask is not a small ask.

If it was, attendance at bars, restaurants, shows, etc. would not fall off a cliff when imposed.

I'm tired of hearing that masks don't have consequences and are just basic precautions.

I for one feel it massively reduces the quality of my interactions and trust in people. I find it much harder to communicate properly. The long term consequences of this are not taken into account.

And I'm vaccinated, everyone in my country who wants to be vaccinated is. Why should I reduce the quality of my life for people who made a choice and took a risk? I actually don't mind that they made this choice, it's their risk. But don't destroy my quality of life for people who knowingly are taking a risk on their end.

Florida has a higher age 65+ vaccination rate than California or New York: https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...

Respiratory viruses peak earlier before Winter in the tropics (ie. the South USA) whereas they peak during the Winter in the North.

Southern USA will peak and fall, and then this Winter you'll see the same thing in the Northern USA. Its just the seasonality of colds/flus which has been known for decades.

Be prepared because this Winter seasonal peak will be blamed on a new 'variant', and used to push either new lockdowns/restrictions, or booster shots.

> We had a small chance of getting rid of covid if we had gotten nearly everyone, 90%+, vaccinated.

By small chance, you mean 0% chance, right? Variants were already spreading by the time any vaccines were available. There are also billions of people who will likely not be vaccinated within the next couple years or so.

So in the end what's your point?

Do you support mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing for the rest of our lives?

> Get people vaccinated

Repeating this line doesn't really work anymore. I vaccinated myself and my whole family months ago, my county has ~80% full vaccination rate, anyone and everyone who could and wanted to, got a shot already.

Yet, there are 90 million people in this country that don't give a shit and will not vaccinate. Worse, soon the vaccine will probably wear out, and then the whole country will have to be convinced all over again to get a booster shot, who knows how many times, too. And then there is stuff like TFA that says that although vaccines are the best we've got so far, vaccinated people still end up in the hospital.

So although I'll personally line up for any booster shots the moment they become available, the reality is probably going to get much more complicated than vaccinating everyone and moving on.

I feel at this point hospitals should just triage the willfully unvaccinated covid patients behind all other emergencies.

Possibly set aside X number of beds for covid patients, the rest of the ICU beds are for everything else. Out of covid beds? Well you've gotta wait for someone to die and then they'll see you.

They chose to "not live in fear", they can live - and possibly die - with the consequences.

> Getting booster shots to lessen the risk to people that are at greater risk from the virus isn't a huge imposition.

You may think so. I politely disagree.

What you should hope to be invented is better vaccines/treatment.

Honest question here, do vaccines actually reduce the chance for covid to mutate? Spitballing, I would expect a vaccine to decrease the number of total mutations that can occur but also simultaneously increase the selective pressure on the virus, increasing the chance that any mutations that improve the virus’ ability to resist the vaccine become dominant.

To make an analogy, does spraying every surface in a hospital with an antibacterial solution result in no bacteria or just make it more likely to see resistant bacteria? I’d guess it’s a function of how potent the solution was and how well every last surface was coated. If you start with a 10% solution, don’t achieve full coverage and keep ramping up slowly perhaps we’ll just see something like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

Agree with the rest of your post though.

the cost of these vaccines is largely hidden, no? Each country made deals behind closed doors AFAIK. I've seen some estimates of $12-$30 a shot, but have no idea the validity of this.

How much do the treatments cost? Is it vastly different?

> No long term side effects.

How do you know? I thought the only study/data from Pfizer covered 6 months. That's not very long term? https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...

I don't think we need to replace vaccines, but large swathes of the population still don't have access. It seems very likely that a multi-modal approach would allow us to treat more people, faster.

Even Pfizer sees vaccination as well as treatment as the path forward: https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/antiviral-efforts

You cannot say it has "no long-term side effects". also a new flu vaccine is developed every year because influenza viruses naturally mutate quickly, as do any viruses. Don't just write things that you wish were true.

https://sanotize.com/

The original strain of the flu was also more deadly. But it eventually mutated and became less

I live healthy. I built a home gym at the start of lockdown and have continued to train powerlifting and Olympic WL both throughout. I get my cardio in, I eat well. I didn't lose weight in the past year – I gained muscle, and my numbers are the best they've ever been.

I got both Pfizer/BNT shots as soon as I could, and I'll get the boosters as soon as I can too.

The belief that healthy living alone is enough to stymie a virus that we still understand relatively poorly is foolhardy. It's in the same category as juice cleanses and homeopathy as far as I'm concerned.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Comorbidity is a fundamental driving factor in whether or not you survive this virus. We've not heard any recommendations from any health agency suggesting a healthier lifestyle would help - it most certainly would statistically speaking. And 18 months in I doubt we'll see anything like that because it has proven to not be politically expedient. (FWIW Ive been intermittent fasting with some pretty good success)

Europeans learned to live with the bubonic plague, which has never been eradicated, and Native Americans, over time, overcame the smallpox that was introduced among them. The people of today can do the same with Covid. It is the only way.

Of course it was realistic. China basically achieved it (I am not a China fan or defender), but the rest of the world failed. The whole world achieved it for the first SARS. However, that ship sailed a long time ago. Probably before the first surge in Italy of COVID-19.

I don't know who was saying this (I wasn't personally reading it), but it was obviously dumb.

The question really isn't whether vaccinated people get sick, or even whether they spread the virus, but whether they end up in the hospital. Right now, if you're vaccinated, you are extraordinarily unlikely to end up in the hospital.

Is it analogous to flu? Do flu vaccines cause mutations as well?

One interesting thing about covid is that it seems to be the first time humanity has collected so much data (eg. contact tracing, phylogenetics through genome sequencing, etc.) about this kind of virus, and applied modern medical knowledge in trying to combat it.

It's very apparent that the overall response hasn't been nearly good enough, but it's probably also the best response there's ever been. (perhaps not the best ROI, though?)

That's a fair critique. I feel like I've heard concerns about the potential for the virus to mutate because of the high level of vaccinations, but like you, I don't know how significant of an issue that is.

the fact that the delta variant came from a country that didn't have widespread vaccines dispels this notion.

It's going to mutate regardless of how many people are vaccinated. The entire point is to make it so that people don't have the runaway immune system responses that are melting lungs and brains.

>Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta

The number of children who are dying of covid has been ridiculously low for a virus that spreads so easily. Hasn't covid deaths for children under the age of 12 been under 1000 since the pandemic started?

> Not to go full scaremonger but we don't know that much about long covid at this point.

My sister had a very mild case of Covid last year after lockdowns started lifting and she went to the hairdresser (masked, obviously not vaccinated). She had the telltale loss of taste, but really no other symptom, and she recovered.

I saw her yesterday in person for the first time in a number of months and she looked so skinny I had to say something, it was worrying to me. She told me she has trouble eating anymore because everything tastes like shit. She says that things she used to love now taste the way cigarettes smell, and she simply can't stomach it.

Her words: "People need to realize that even if you don't die from Covid, it can change your life. I wish I never got this."

Every human that ever lives will die someday. A good life involves a prudent balancing of risks and costs. Nobody alive can ever be 100% safe before or after the advent of covid. Covid maybe a good thing if it forces mature adults to deal with their inevitable mortality like mature adults. Instead we have been seeing pervasive infantilisation of society. Safety has a cost. The world is not black and white. Disclaimer: the above is my opinion. Not flaming.

Vaccines are very different from antibiotics. Antibiotics are single molecules that bind a very specific target. A single mutation of a single protein can render an antibiotic useless. Vaccines induce the immune system to generate a repertoire of antibodies, each of which binds in a different way and each of which is then selected and "evolved" (hypermutation) for increased efficacy. And each individual person creates a different starting and ending repertoire of antibodies. A single mutation, or even a large group of mutations, does not so easily side step all this diversity of antibody types/binding modes. Moreover, we have evidence that the idea that vaccines increase the likelihood of variants is just wrong. We do not see that effect for mumps, polio, smallpox, or any other virus. Moreover, delta appears to have arisen in India, which at the time had vaccination rates very close to zero. Again, providing strong evidence that vaccines are not applying selective pressure for more virulent strains.

Increased transmission is worse than increased fatality rate, counterintuitively, as it's the same percentage deaths of a much much higher number infected - resulting in higher numbers of absolute deaths than if the CFR increased without an increase of transmissibility.