COVID-19 (artist formerly known as Wuhan strain novel Corona virus)

@Ssmiff, over, and over again. All over.

https://www.propublica.org/article/covid-vaccine-wastage

 

That seems ridiculous someone was directed to throw out doses and needs to be told not to. Very easily couldve been done without a national mandate from the president saying "dont throw away extra vaccinations" and isnt a distribution issue imo. Couldve been a janitor for all we know.
Also appears to be more about reporting wasted product than not receiving it in the first place

 

Don't get bogged down in the specifics of the article regarding waste reporting, look at the broader issue: this is occurring all over. An ER doc wrote about it in an Op/Ed not too long ago. Hospital policy said the vaccine team decided that the guidelines wouldn't allow them to vaccine people in the hospital, even though they had left over doses. ER doc walks it up the hospital chain of command until he gets approval to vaccine those in the hospital. By then, the vaccine team has left, and the doses thrown away.

That's a distribution problem. And people absolutely have to be told how to do things. Even people who should know better.

 

It isn't hard to issue a directive that says the hierarchy is the priority, but if you're doing group A and you're out of A, find the first B. It would be better to identify your first set of B, before you crack the bottle for A, that way, you know who are the alternates.

And a simple national distribution plan outlining those, and methods, is not a hard thing to do.

It would be better to put a dose in anyone, than to put a dose in the trash.

 

Yay, 501Y.V2 variant is evading antibodies, which means the vaccine will be reduced in efficacy, or not at all effective, against it.

 

Any chance that natural antibodies in some people are keying in on a portion of the virus that the mutation impacted more significantly than the spike protein?

 

I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you saying antibodies may be targeting it, just different ones? If so, yes, that's how the immune system would work. Different antibodies would be formed. But that makes the ones formed by the vaccine more likely to be useless, since new ones are needed.

 

I am saying that antibodies work by recognizing parts of the virus and then attacking it. I imagine our natural immune systems build a range of antibodies that each recognize a different part (or parts) of the virus. My question is - is it likely that everyone builds antibodies that identify the spike protein or not? If everyone likely does and their antibodies aren’t as effective on this strain, then that does make you worry about the vaccine’s effectiveness. Maybe my logic is misguided - but I was thinking that if many people don’t actually have spike protein antibodies naturally, there’s still a chance that the vaccine’s induced antibodies might be effective against the strain.

 

Antibodies are manufactured, based on presentation by other cells. Cells, that are part of the natural immunity, bind to foreign (and not-foreign, in the case of autoimmunity) biological markers, and present those markers to the immune system for examination. Once examined, if it is determined that an antibody needs to be made, the immune system passes along those markets to be made into antibodies. And antibodies are produced. After the infection has cleared, that blue print for antibody exists in some measure in the body, but decreases with time. The next time similar markers are seen, the presentation cells walk it up the chain until it gets to the decision engine. If it already has a blueprint for those markers, it quickly ramps up production of antibodies using that blue print. Otherwise, it goes through the longer and slower process of making new antibodies.

So, to your question: Everyone builds antibodies to the spike protein because that is the thing that is easiest for the immune system to recognize as foreign. People don't have spike protein antibodies naturally. They are gained through the immune system's factory, as explained above.

 

The first sentence of your last paragraph answers the question. I just wasn’t sure that we detected spike protein natural antibodies in all folks who have natural antibodies. I agree with the logic it’s likely the easiest for the body to recognize. But just wasn’t sure it was the case for all/most responses and pondering if that might be why the variant was elusive (likely not all people but some people).

 

Biology is all about binding, right? These chemicals attract to these chemicals. And things fit like a "lock and key."

If the spike protein is the key, and the antibody is the lock, if the key don't fit in the lock... and that is what is happening with this variant.

The spike proteins are mutated in such a way that the antibody cannot chemically bind to the protein, to mark it ready for the immune system to dispose of. And so new antibodies that can bind to it will have to be created.

So if your vaccine antibodies are one key. But you need a different key. No matter how many of that one key you have... it isn't going to fit that lock.

 

Yeah the hope was that any mutations that changed the spike protein enough to leave it unrecognized by the body’s immune response to the original spike protein (coded by the vaccine), then those mutations would also decrease its ability to bind to cells and cause infection. But alas that doesn’t seem to be the case.

 

Viruses that cannot infect will not move on, so any virus that is infectious must bind. You can't have a decrease in binding and an increase in infection. Viruses have to hijack the cellular mechanism in order to replicate. If they can't get inside the cell, they can't replicate.

 

Yes I get that. I’m saying the hope was that any virus that can replicate (meaning the spike protein is effective at binding to human cells) would not have a spike protein significantly different from the original spike protein, or sufficiently different that the spike antibodies induced by the vaccine wouldn’t recognize the mew variant.

 

Yes, that was my hope. And it was largely proving true, until this new one. There is still a chance the vaccine produces antibodies that recognize, whereas natural antibodies do not, as the vaccine is less specific. So I'll hope for that, but expect that it won't be so. Given that the variant is in 20 countries, we'll find out soon enough.

 

this is the south africa variant, right?

 

I may have diplomatic immunitee from that one

 

Yup. Tennessee just found the UK variant in 2/7 samples, so they've concluded it is here.

I imagine the South Africa variant is the same. We really hope it isn't, but... it is. We just haven't found it yet.

 

UK deaths per day currently equivalent to 6,500 to 7,000 in US