This generally means that a pseudovirus built with the mutated spike escapes some monoclonal antibodies and has reduced neutralization titers against convalescent sera, which is fairly normal and doesn't add up to an escape mutation.
When it mutates enough to form an actual escape mutation that will probably come at a cost to the virus for transmissibility/virulence/viral load because it will need to escape at ~20 different epitopes. And still cross reactive T-cells will likely identify the new strain enough and active your immune system to contain it so that it acts more like a common cold than COVID-19.
Booster shots are probably still not a bad idea though, the more it gets boxed in by our immune systems, the more it'll have to make those costly evolutionary choices and become less virulent.
In a r/askscience , there was a report that they are also working on a surface identifying vaccine, which doesn’t mutate (as much?), instead based on the spike protein. They didn’t earlier because it takes a longer time to develop and is harder.
It sounds like you might be a good person to review and give your thoughts on this interview between Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist, and Geert Vanden Bossche, a virologist, who discuss this in length and detail it for layperson? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNyAovuUxro
> the more it'll have to make those costly evolutionary choices and become less virulent
Why would evolution select for less virulence in a virus like this? Given covid doesn't rely on symptoms to spread like the common cold seems to, it would seem like the evolutionary pressure would be the opposite. Rather than moderate symptoms, instead jack up viral loads in the host as quickly as possible to spread before the immune system gets involved.
I’m curious, what is your education background in?
Do you have some sort of medical education or this is a regurgitation of some sources you’ve read as a hobbyist?
I ask this because you seem to talk from a place of authority and fact and i respect that but typically thought of Ycomb as a place comp sci folks usually congregate.
I can't answer to the specific source you saw but you are most likely misinterpreting the concepts at play.
When you see articles about antibody evading or antibody escape the research is not dealing in absolutes. It's perfectly possible for there be some antibody escape but the overall immune response is perfectly adequate to quickly deal with an infection.
With the variants of concern so far we've seen a similar pattern, sometimes there can be a reduction in efficacy of the vaccines (remember all efficacy endpoints are measured against preventing symptomatic disease), but at the same time they mostly provide a very high protection against severe disease and hospitalization.
So the two headlines are both perfectly correct, the current variants of concern have the ability to demonstrate antibody escape at a slightly higher rate than the original variant, but the current vaccines still protect people against sever disease.
Usually its because they aren't always talking about the exact same thing. So far at least, whenever you see a headline about a strain "evading antibody capabilities", it means that they've found that the strain induces a lower reading on various measures of immunity in sera, like neutralizing titers, than previous strains do.
However, a measure of immunity like neutralizing titers isn't a 1:1 function of immunity.
So a simple example (with made up numbers) would be that a particular strain sees a 6x reduction in neutralizing titers compared to the original strain, but it doesn't mean much because there are enough neutralizing titers provided by the vaccine that even a 15x fold reduction would provide strong protection. In this case you could say that the strain has modest antibody evading capabilities AND that the vaccine provides strong protection against it.
I think most media outlets tend to overemphasize the "evasion" angle in headlines, either due to incompetence or for clickbait purposes. Given that almost every single one I've read has a quote from a physician along the lines of "This isn't anything to worry about, it still provides protection" buried a few paragraphs down, I'm assuming its the latter.
This article doesn't seem to address any of the strains originating in India, fwiw. My guess is that they haven't known of them long enough to understand their reaction in vaccinated people.
The popular media has done a huge disservice by naming this the "Indian double mutant." It's two changes that have been seen in other variants and have been studied already.
The "double mutation" is L452R and E484Q. L452R is the defining feature of the B.1.429 variant (California). E484Q has been seen in derivatives of B.1.429 and in bunches of other variants in the US. It has some antibody evasive properties, but not enough to render vaccines ineffective. Yes, the E484K mutation seen in B.1.351, P.1, and P.2 has been more studied, but E484Q has been studied too.
Double mutant makes it sound like it is something entirely novel that is going to murder us all.
India is by and large not using Pfizer. Evidence to date points to AstraZeneca (which they are using) being quite effective in preventing serious illness.
It means whatever you read into it, it's not in any way scientific, or even just objectively quantifying an effect.
The current hysteria has really opened my eyes in regards to mass media. We all know mainstream reporting is bad in fields we're experts in, but with the many crazy and often self-contradicting things that are currently reported you don't even have to have any expertise to see the problems in the story.
I agree, unfortunately there have been so many half truths and misleading articles both online and on legacy media that I find myself not knowing what or who to trust anymore.
I have an appointment to get my first jab in 43 hours from now and I am bouncing back and forth between getting it and cancelation.
Five years ago I would not be having these doubts but it seems like everyone has alterior motives.
I wish the social media giants would just stop all the censorship and allow the discussions to take place. I appreciate that they are trying to stop disinformation but I just can't think of one time in the past that the ones stifling free speach have ever been on the right side of history.
If you already have an appointment the only debate should be whether you will need an additional third booster shot in the future if the strain in India breaks out and is different enough.
The key thing you should notice about the COVID vaccine detractors is their inability to distinguish between vaccines and the wildly different technology between the different vaccines, alongside their inability acknowledge the geopolitical hurdles for any of their conspiracies. If a German-company made vaccine is part of an insidious plot, then should you get the Oxford one developed in the UK? If Bill Gates is influencing vaccines in some strange scheme, does the conclusion mean you should trust the Russian Sputnik vaccine more instead due to the geopolitical impossibility of a Bill Gates plot being involved? The absurdity basically cancels itself out, just get the shot you are offered.
If you're under 55 and are healthy your chances of dying from this virus are basically non-existent.
You'll get a sniffle/fever for a few days and then be immune.
Don't put an experimental drug into your body for no reason.
Anyone who says variant or strains are a problem has merely to look at over 50% of the United States with no covid restrictions for months who are at record lows of infections and with minimal vaccines.
The variant or strain problem is a nothing burger.
The article that I saw today was contradicting itself. In one place it said that there are 3 mutations and that vaccine might not work on it, and in another place that it should.
My understanding is that at this point we don't know yet. The actual testing would probably require a vaccinated person to be exposed to that strain.
yes, as with all the other variants they should just say "we don't know yet, let's find out", but instead they defer to some scientific language of "no evidence that it protects" that the general population cannot relate to
I don't have access to the FT article as it is paywalled, but some less meaningful sources have summarized it and use the "modest evading" phrase.
As I don't care for the conversation as I lost all energy going over this stuff last year when the same thing happened, a preprint is not peer reviewed and is necessary to become peer reviewed. Hundreds of thousands of people will die before that happens. Make your own decisions.
Both sides are represented, that’s a good thing. The thing I hate is that the side people tend to agree with will be automatically assumed right and the side they don’t will be fake news.
Not necessarily [1]. COVID vaccines particularly give you far higher neutralization titers than a prior infection.
[1] A glaring counterexample to your hypothesis is Brazil (Manuas) where prior infections (as high as 60%) didn't stop the P1 variant from ripping through.
> [1] A glaring counterexample to your hypothesis is Brazil (Manuas) where prior infections (as high as 60%) didn't stop the P1 variant from ripping through.
The prior infection estimates for Manaus were simply wrong. They were based on a paper that "adjusted" the observed seroprevalence rates upward by a factor of ~3x. The parsimonious conclusion is that these corrections were too aggressive and ended up over-estimating infections. See Figure 2a in the paper, here:
It is a "glaring" example only of how the low editorial standards of major journals during this pandemic has led to a wave of confusion amongst the public.
mRNA vaccines produce antibodies targeting just the spike protein( S protein). There are other proteins on the virus like the M protein. Antibodies produced during an infection may target other parts of the virus so you can’t compare the two.
Isn't it the spike protein that is usually different between these variants? In that case antibodies that target a different part should even be more effective.
No. Antibodies to an infection can be a variety that target different parts of the virus.
The vaccine produces antibodies to a specific stretch of the spike protein. So everyone who has the Pfizer vaccine has a similar (but not identical) group of antibodies.
Those infected with Covid-19 have a more diverse set of antibodies that may or may not protect as well against varients.
Interestingly, the mRNA vaccines produce superior immunity compared to getting infected, due mainly to the two dose regimen. For similarly long-lasting natural immunity you'd probably need to get infected with covid twice.
There's also the benefit that with the mRNA vaccines (and the adenovirus vaccines as well), your body is developing antibodies specifically for the spike protein, which is highly conserved. Your body's immune response to actual covid may, just by chance, focus on a less strongly conserved target.
the big diff between a vaccine and a previous infection is that the vaccine doesn't damage your body in the process of training your body to attack it.
Covid can wreck havoc on your body and leave it in a weaker state.
20 million people already had the virus. I’m one of them. Are we the red headed step child that we have forgotten about?
Let me change the perspective: when I get the flu because I stupidly did not get the flu shot that year, I don’t rush out and get the flu shot after the fact. I’m wondering why I would do the same with this vaccine when there are lots of evidence that first rounders are not likely to be infected even by variants (assuming low viral load)
> BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told CNBC last month he is “confident” the company’s vaccine, which was developed together with U.S. drugmaker Pfizer, is effective against the variant from India.
The reality is that vaccines target multiple proteins and one protein mutation usually does not even evade that specific protein from matching (much).
It's a sliding bumpy scale with each mutation reducing the effectiveness of the vaccine some small random amount.
It's very likely that all the current vaccines confer sufficient immunity to all current variants to a degree that will prevent serious Illness and likely even transmissibility.
But the real takeaway here is that, like flu, we are looking at yearly covid boosters for everyone for years to come.
If it protects against the 2 least significant variants, that's less interesting of an article.
Unless it protects against all variants the headline would likely be inaccurate without the "worrying" qualifier.
I could agree with a criticism that "worrying" should be replaced with a better identifier of the specific variants being discussed, but I don't have a replacement proposal. And dropping the word "worrying" seems like it might be factually wrong (it also might not be, I don't know)
There are hundreds if not thousands of variants by now. The ones that matter are the ones that spread more easily and/or make people sicker, aka the "worrying" ones.
It's not telling you to whom it is worrying. You made the mistake of assuming the headline meant "to you" but it is not stated. It is certainly worrying to someone.
Great news. Wish we could see the impacts of pfizer in the indian population against some of the other variants coming out there (and helping them out as well).
Since it’s based basically on the same mRNA technology (and has the same reported efficacy) I would assume it works as well as the Pfizer one. No hard data to back this up, though.
In Germany, almost everyone refers to it as the Biontech vaccine. For obvious reasons. I would even go so far as to say that most people here don't realize it's the same as the "Pfizer vaccine". (On the other hand, the Moderna vaccine is referred to as the "Moderna vaccine".)
Pfizer (and Fosun) is also the distributor, ran the trials, and handled much of the public/regulator/media facing communications. As such, the Pfizer branding is not surprising.
Production is a multi-step process involving both Pfizer and BioNTech.
Likewise, look at how Astra-Zeneca made many missteps, mishandling data, sending out wrong doses in trials. Pfizer did not make these mistakes. The distributing company not only matters, it matters a LOT.
In China we call it Fosun/Biontech and that's fine. I would never call it the Fosun vaccin out of respect for the people who actually made the breakthrough.
It is maybe for you but not everywhere, i can see it being referred to as Biontech just as often, if not oftener than Pfizer. Maybe because Germany is our neighboor, but maybe also because it is "more right"
You mean the company that scaled up production to hundreds of millions of doses, ran clinical trials in dozens of countries for tens of thousands of patients, put together all the regulatory documentation for dozens of countries, including negotiations with regulators, then developed a worldwide logistics system to get the vaccine where it's needed. And did all that with few stumbles in less than a year.
But they re like Fosun, one of several. Ofc it s amazing how Fosun managed to vaccinate a million of us in Hong Kong, shipping ultra cold vaccines from Germany and setting up factories soon in Singapore. But man, the vaccine is made by Biontech and without them fosun would be shipping nothing at all.
As for Pfizer, they do nothing at all for me in Hong Kong, see ?
It's more like calling a Dell an Intel. Intel arguably provided the most important R&D in the heart of the computer. But the manufacturing, testing, distribution, branding, sales, negotiations, regulations, etc is all Dell. So go ahead and call your PC an Intel, but it's not wrong to call it a Dell either.
That’s why Pfizer is behind the whole waving of intellectual property rights so they don’t have to pay Biontech a dime and why the German government is against the waving of rights.
Which brings me to the second question. Is the proposed waiver going to improve the supply situation or create more problems? And my answer is categorically the latter.
Readit News
The actual article said "modest antibody evading capabilities“
I hate that the internet has become this way
This generally means that a pseudovirus built with the mutated spike escapes some monoclonal antibodies and has reduced neutralization titers against convalescent sera, which is fairly normal and doesn't add up to an escape mutation.
When it mutates enough to form an actual escape mutation that will probably come at a cost to the virus for transmissibility/virulence/viral load because it will need to escape at ~20 different epitopes. And still cross reactive T-cells will likely identify the new strain enough and active your immune system to contain it so that it acts more like a common cold than COVID-19.
Booster shots are probably still not a bad idea though, the more it gets boxed in by our immune systems, the more it'll have to make those costly evolutionary choices and become less virulent.
Why would evolution select for less virulence in a virus like this? Given covid doesn't rely on symptoms to spread like the common cold seems to, it would seem like the evolutionary pressure would be the opposite. Rather than moderate symptoms, instead jack up viral loads in the host as quickly as possible to spread before the immune system gets involved.
/not a biologist
Do you have some sort of medical education or this is a regurgitation of some sources you’ve read as a hobbyist?
I ask this because you seem to talk from a place of authority and fact and i respect that but typically thought of Ycomb as a place comp sci folks usually congregate.
When you see articles about antibody evading or antibody escape the research is not dealing in absolutes. It's perfectly possible for there be some antibody escape but the overall immune response is perfectly adequate to quickly deal with an infection.
With the variants of concern so far we've seen a similar pattern, sometimes there can be a reduction in efficacy of the vaccines (remember all efficacy endpoints are measured against preventing symptomatic disease), but at the same time they mostly provide a very high protection against severe disease and hospitalization.
So the two headlines are both perfectly correct, the current variants of concern have the ability to demonstrate antibody escape at a slightly higher rate than the original variant, but the current vaccines still protect people against sever disease.
However, a measure of immunity like neutralizing titers isn't a 1:1 function of immunity.
So a simple example (with made up numbers) would be that a particular strain sees a 6x reduction in neutralizing titers compared to the original strain, but it doesn't mean much because there are enough neutralizing titers provided by the vaccine that even a 15x fold reduction would provide strong protection. In this case you could say that the strain has modest antibody evading capabilities AND that the vaccine provides strong protection against it.
I think most media outlets tend to overemphasize the "evasion" angle in headlines, either due to incompetence or for clickbait purposes. Given that almost every single one I've read has a quote from a physician along the lines of "This isn't anything to worry about, it still provides protection" buried a few paragraphs down, I'm assuming its the latter.
The "double mutation" is L452R and E484Q. L452R is the defining feature of the B.1.429 variant (California). E484Q has been seen in derivatives of B.1.429 and in bunches of other variants in the US. It has some antibody evasive properties, but not enough to render vaccines ineffective. Yes, the E484K mutation seen in B.1.351, P.1, and P.2 has been more studied, but E484Q has been studied too.
Double mutant makes it sound like it is something entirely novel that is going to murder us all.
The real immunity comes from the T cells which will create new antibodies when needed, and may adjust those to variations in the strain.
It’s just a glass half full or half empty statement.
The current hysteria has really opened my eyes in regards to mass media. We all know mainstream reporting is bad in fields we're experts in, but with the many crazy and often self-contradicting things that are currently reported you don't even have to have any expertise to see the problems in the story.
I have an appointment to get my first jab in 43 hours from now and I am bouncing back and forth between getting it and cancelation.
Five years ago I would not be having these doubts but it seems like everyone has alterior motives.
I wish the social media giants would just stop all the censorship and allow the discussions to take place. I appreciate that they are trying to stop disinformation but I just can't think of one time in the past that the ones stifling free speach have ever been on the right side of history.
The key thing you should notice about the COVID vaccine detractors is their inability to distinguish between vaccines and the wildly different technology between the different vaccines, alongside their inability acknowledge the geopolitical hurdles for any of their conspiracies. If a German-company made vaccine is part of an insidious plot, then should you get the Oxford one developed in the UK? If Bill Gates is influencing vaccines in some strange scheme, does the conclusion mean you should trust the Russian Sputnik vaccine more instead due to the geopolitical impossibility of a Bill Gates plot being involved? The absurdity basically cancels itself out, just get the shot you are offered.
Sorry, what is the downside to getting the vaccine in your mind?
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
You'll get a sniffle/fever for a few days and then be immune.
Don't put an experimental drug into your body for no reason.
Anyone who says variant or strains are a problem has merely to look at over 50% of the United States with no covid restrictions for months who are at record lows of infections and with minimal vaccines.
The variant or strain problem is a nothing burger.
My understanding is that at this point we don't know yet. The actual testing would probably require a vaccinated person to be exposed to that strain.
Chances are that vaccine is probably still fine.
That is the totality of information.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/10/coronavirus...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.442663v1
I don't have access to the FT article as it is paywalled, but some less meaningful sources have summarized it and use the "modest evading" phrase.
As I don't care for the conversation as I lost all energy going over this stuff last year when the same thing happened, a preprint is not peer reviewed and is necessary to become peer reviewed. Hundreds of thousands of people will die before that happens. Make your own decisions.
Dead Comment
[1] A glaring counterexample to your hypothesis is Brazil (Manuas) where prior infections (as high as 60%) didn't stop the P1 variant from ripping through.
The prior infection estimates for Manaus were simply wrong. They were based on a paper that "adjusted" the observed seroprevalence rates upward by a factor of ~3x. The parsimonious conclusion is that these corrections were too aggressive and ended up over-estimating infections. See Figure 2a in the paper, here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33293339/#&gid=article-figur...
It is a "glaring" example only of how the low editorial standards of major journals during this pandemic has led to a wave of confusion amongst the public.
Do you have a source for that?
This says nothing about the strength of a previous infection. It very plausibly just says that R > 1.7, ie it is infecting the remaining 40%.
The vaccine produces antibodies to a specific stretch of the spike protein. So everyone who has the Pfizer vaccine has a similar (but not identical) group of antibodies.
Those infected with Covid-19 have a more diverse set of antibodies that may or may not protect as well against varients.
Covid can wreck havoc on your body and leave it in a weaker state.
Let me change the perspective: when I get the flu because I stupidly did not get the flu shot that year, I don’t rush out and get the flu shot after the fact. I’m wondering why I would do the same with this vaccine when there are lots of evidence that first rounders are not likely to be infected even by variants (assuming low viral load)
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/india-covid-explainer-what-w...
The reality is that vaccines target multiple proteins and one protein mutation usually does not even evade that specific protein from matching (much).
It's a sliding bumpy scale with each mutation reducing the effectiveness of the vaccine some small random amount.
It's very likely that all the current vaccines confer sufficient immunity to all current variants to a degree that will prevent serious Illness and likely even transmissibility.
But the real takeaway here is that, like flu, we are looking at yearly covid boosters for everyone for years to come.
If it protects against the 2 least significant variants, that's less interesting of an article.
Unless it protects against all variants the headline would likely be inaccurate without the "worrying" qualifier.
I could agree with a criticism that "worrying" should be replaced with a better identifier of the specific variants being discussed, but I don't have a replacement proposal. And dropping the word "worrying" seems like it might be factually wrong (it also might not be, I don't know)
Deleted Comment
But I'm a tad annoyed that they pronounce it "Bion-Tech" rather than "Bio-N-Tech", the latter was the intended pronunciation by the owners, I think.
Production is a multi-step process involving both Pfizer and BioNTech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID-...
You mean the company that scaled up production to hundreds of millions of doses, ran clinical trials in dozens of countries for tens of thousands of patients, put together all the regulatory documentation for dozens of countries, including negotiations with regulators, then developed a worldwide logistics system to get the vaccine where it's needed. And did all that with few stumbles in less than a year.
So yeah, they are "just the manufacturer".
As for Pfizer, they do nothing at all for me in Hong Kong, see ?
https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/why_pfizer_opposes_th...
Specifically this section:
Which brings me to the second question. Is the proposed waiver going to improve the supply situation or create more problems? And my answer is categorically the latter.
Dead Comment