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[wierd]

Boris insists people go to work*; OF COURSE they are going to continue using the underground, and public buses.



* That is, he wants people to simultaneously "Stay home" and observe the lockdown, but does not want any of that economic downturn, what with only just recently finishing the BREXIT deal, and it being pretty high profile, and all that.  As such, you should all find a way to continue your service industry jobs, without actually being there to provide service. Somehow.

[martinuzz]

Virologist worldwide ring the alarm bells.
The South-African and the Amazone variant of the virus are capable of infecting people who already had the 'original' corona.
While there have been cases of reinfection with the original virus, these were extremely rare.

The South African and Amazone mutations however, seem to be able to infect up to half of those who have already had corona, a series of studies with the blood of recovered patients has shown. The antibodies in the blood of half of the test group did nothing at all to combat the new variants.

There are no indications yet that this means the vaccins will also be less effective against those variants.
Virologist are very worried though, to see how quickly the virus can develop immunity resistance.

It will likely mean that we will need to develop new vaccins every year, just like with the flu.
Virologists think that the modern vaccins that focus on spike proteins might not be the best solution, because this is where the virus is very mutable. They advise pahrma companies to go back to the drawing table and start developing 'old-fashioned' vaccins, made from virus particles.
"For now, best we can do is keep vaccinating and cross our fingers".

[ChairmanPoo]

Virologist worldwide ring the alarm bells.
The South-African and the Amazone variant of the virus are capable of infecting people who already had the 'original' corona.
While there have been cases of reinfection with the original virus, these were extremely rare.

The South African and Amazone mutations however, seem to be able to infect up to half of those who have already had corona, a series of studies with the blood of recovered patients has shown. The antibodies in the blood of half of the test group did nothing at all to combat the new variants.

There are no indications yet that this means the vaccins will also be less effective against those variants.
Virologist are very worried though, to see how quickly the virus can develop immunity resistance.

It will likely mean that we will need to develop new vaccins every year, just like with the flu.
Virologists think that the modern vaccins that focus on spike proteins might not be the best solution, because this is where the virus is very mutable. They advise pahrma companies to go back to the drawing table and start developing 'old-fashioned' vaccins, made from virus particles.
"For now, best we can do is keep vaccinating and cross our fingers".

These are all in vitro provisional results. I'd take them with a pinch of salt.

I'll get worried about the new variants if we start to get reinfections or breakthrough infections left and right, because there is nothing else I can do.  Variants are everywhere, I'll continue wearing ffp3 everywhere no matter what, but tbh I'd be surprised if the impact on vaccinated or covid survivors was the same as the original covid when noone had prior exposure

[martinuzz]

Unknown. The South-African and Amazon variants have already spread over the world though.  So far over here in the Netherlands, we have 1 confirmed Amazon South African mutant. Contact tracement shows no links to South Africa whatsoever, unknown how it entered the country.

The Amazon mutant is thought to be responsible for the current outbreak in Manaus.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/virologen-slaan-alarm-coronamutanten-kunnen-opnieuw-infecteren~b2340b33/

[ChairmanPoo]

Edited for referwnce: I wont say I am not worried about the new strains but I am a bit skeptical as to how those invitro results correlate to the actual clinical presentation. There were similar results with the British variant at first...

There's literally 0 things we can do about this crap at an individual level anyway barring continuing the precautions well beyond getting the vaccine.

And doing a serious effort to suppress the virus of course but our goverments decided thar they'd rather "live with it" so here we stand.

Edit RUH OH TURNS OUT THAT THERE ARE REINFECTIONS LEFT AND RIGHT IN SOUTH AFRICA. DO PANIC

https://mg.co.za/coronavirus-essentials/2021-01-19-can-you-get-reinfected-with-covid-19-sa-has-4-000-potential-reinfections/


Edit: mind you: a study about HCW showed that 10% of them  got covid reinfections. So it could be that covid infection immunity is not that great to begin with

[martinuzz]

As far as I am aware, reinfection cases with the original Covid are rare, in the less than 1% spectrum.

These new variants are up to more than 50%.

So yeah, do panic.

But yeah, HCW at 10%, that's possible, they are exposed to the virus more, and more often than the general population.  Plus, if they wore protection and still got corona, it is likely they got it only very mildly (only inhaling a small viral load to begin with), which makes reinfection more likely.

[ChairmanPoo]

Edit #2: SA invitro plasma preprint

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1.full.pdf+html

[ChairmanPoo]

As far as I am aware, reinfection cases with the original Covid are rare, in the less than 1% spectrum.

These new variants are up to more than 50%.

So yeah, do panic.

I want to emphasize again that this is invitro. It does not necessarily represent the real clinical picture

But yeah, HCW at 10%, that's possible, they are exposed to the virus more, and more often than the general population.  Plus, if they wore protection and still got corona, it is likely they got it only very mildly (only inhaling a small viral load to begin with), which makes reinfection more likely

Well that begs the question that they were wearing protection (and the type of protection)

[martinuzz]

True, but anti-bodies not working in vitro is a pretty good indication of them not working in the wild either.

[martinuzz]

Our government will likely announce a curfew later today, from 20:30 till 4:30.

It's unsure if it will really happen, because parliament is very divided on it (curfew still has very strong WW2 associations here), city mayors are very divided on it and police forces have already told the government that they do not have the manpower to enforce it.

Meanwhile, fucktards are buying winter coats with food delivery logo from online marketplaces, so they can ignore the curfew by pretending they are food deliverers.

EDIT: furthermore, the government will adjust the advise to only have two visitors max, to 1 visitor max.  It's an advise, not a law, because it is not legally possible to enforce in private space like homes. We would need to change the constitution for that.  That takes at least 4 years (a change in constitution over here needs to be ratified by two consecutive parliaments and senates, we have elections every 4 years)

[ChairmanPoo]

True, but anti-bodies not working in vitro is a pretty good indication of them not working in the wild either.

Things are more nuanced than that. If you go to the source it's not so much thst their antibodies did not work as that their titres were much lower
Look at the source

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1.full.pdf+html

SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 lineageshows high levels ofresistance to convalescent plasma/sera.We next sought  to  evaluate  the  effect  of 501Y.V2spikemutations  on  polyclonal  plasma/seraderived  from individualsinfected with SARS-CoV-2, including individuals whowere hospitalised for severe COVID-19. Sampleswere divided into two groups, halfwithhighertitre neutralizing antibodies (22 of 44,ID50>400)and half with lowertitres(22 of 44,400 >ID50>25) to the original SARS-CoV-2 D614G lineage (Fig.2a-left). Consistent  with  previous  studies27, whenstratified  by disease  severity,convalescent  individuals who reported  mild to  moderate disease  developed  substantially  lower  neutralizing  antibody  titres(average ID50 titre488,  n=30)  than  severely  ill  individuals  from  the  hospitalizedcohorts  (average ID50 titre 4212, n=14).When these same samples were assessed against the 501Y.V2 virus, nearly half (21 of 44, 48%) had no detectable neutralization activity, with only three samples (7%) retaining titresof ID50>400 (Fig.2a-right). Notably,  all  three  of  these  samples  were obtainedfrom  individuals  reporting  severe  disease  who  had some  of  the  highest neutralization  titres  against  the original  virus.  To define  the 

So TLDR: they had two groups of 22 people. Half had a lot of antibodies because they had severe disease, half had less antibodies due to milder disease.

When tested against the new variant there were 21 that had no detectable neutralizing atb activity but if you look at the graph, they predictably match  for the most part the ones that had lower atb titres to begin with, with a couple of outliers that didnt show it despite having higher titres (so maybe 5-10%?)

Notably: this does not necessarily mean that any of those guys will have the same SARS as the first time. That they have lower quantities of circulating antibodies doesnt mean that they wont produce higher quantities when reexposed to the disease, or a variant (they are not immune naive to the virus anymore). I'd expect at least a degree of cross reactivity

[martinuzz]

Of the 189000 Israelis that had themselves tested for corona, after being vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccin, 12400 (6.6%) tested positive.
Among those were 69 people who had already received the second dose of the vaccin.

So it looks like the Pfizer is doing what it's supposed to be doing, or maybe even better. It was expected that it would offer about 60% protection after the first shot, and 95% after the second dose.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think they are actually less than happy with the results of the vaccine single shot. Didnt go through the details but the headlines were that public health folks were disappointed.

I think that it was (once again) based on antibody titres more than clinical data.

[martinuzz]

Well yeah, my newspaper said too that there was disappointment but I don't understand why, because the numbers are much better than the predicted effectiveness after a single shot.

[ChairmanPoo]

Well the raw numbers dont say very much by themselves. I would not expect all 189000 vaccine recipients to be exposed to covid19. Note that clinical effectiveness reports came from a trial with a control group.


The disappointment I understand comes from the level of antibodies produced by a single vaccine dose which was expected to be higher.

Again: the usual caveats: the raw numbers of infected dont give you something you can compare 1 to 1, and there is more to immunity to antibody levels.

And a third one: real world data does not necessarily match trial data as it includes a lot of factors that are not present in trials.