Chap wrote:Unless you are a working professional virologist/epidemiologist, please DON'T speculate on this topic.
And
the speculation has begun as of yesterday -- from your side of the pond, even:
Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the University of Edinburgh, said that Britons are "very likely" to contract the variant "in the next couple of weeks".
"Everybody’s very likely to experience it in the next few weeks. If it is milder, and we know infection induces an immune response, [so] it is possible that this could act as a natural vaccine, getting to those people who have so far been unwilling to be vaccinated," Prof Riley told BBC Radio 4.
"But I think we have to exercise a huge degree of caution with that, because there’s a huge ‘if’ about this ‘is it milder?’ And I think it’s very dangerous to compare data from South Africa to the UK. In the South African population there’s been so many waves of infection they’ve gone through, lots of immunity and a much younger population."
A
wise man brought this to our attention at the outset of the virus:
Chap wrote:Listening to the BBC today, I heard an immunologist make a clear statement about what governments are really trying to do with COVID-19 - and which, in fact, they currently have no alternative to doing. But they can't say it openly, because it does not sound at all good. I was already aware of the science behind this, but I had not yet seen it so clearly put together and stated so starkly. Here it is:
Governments know that it is not only inevitable that a large part of their populations will be infected with and suffer illness from COVID-19 - they actually need this to happen, because (in the absence of any vaccine), it is the only way to eliminate the virus from their population.
Now let's tweak this sentiment just a little: substitute "in the absence of a vaccine" to "in the absence of a rational population willing to get the vaccine". How best might we achieve herd immunity? And will there be a better bet around the corner than Omicron?
Indeed, the instructions from authorities are still to get the vaccine, I never said otherwise. I even said I was "60%" likely to get the booster, which is more likely than not. Another factor I neglected to mention, is that we're on a fast track for a Omicron specific booster by March if not sooner, and since I work from home and barely mingle with society indoors, I might rather wait, rather than get a booster now and another three months later.
To speculate further, If the United States leads the world into a new era of right-wing politics, I can foresee a backlash to mandatory vaccination as extreme as banning vaccinations altogether along with banning abortion. If we have no deep state now, then Ajax and his ilk may force the creation of a deep state: a secret shadow government that keeps society more or less on track while right-wing jack asses build a public world based on thirteenth century ideas. In such a situation, genetically engineering viruses to unleash on the public may be the only way to save humanity. Another political risk to Omicron is that if Omicron ends the pandemic, then right-wingers will just assume the next time around we should lead people die because the outcome is inevitable. Well, without the vaccines and social distancing, the deaths would have been much worse thus far, and also, an Omicron next time around might kill 20% of the population before it works itself out. It's a crap shoot.
As Res points out, there would be a huge number of unknowns to gain-of-function cross-breeding with less harmful viruses, including moral ones, but I think we'll hear more about it. The greatest unknown I think, is predicting the severity of disease based on virus structure. Infecting cell lines to the extent it mimics infecting actual organisms doesn't help understand overall severity to health of the organism.
The
Omicron mutation sequence comes from common cold, as Res said.
I am not at my normal computer and so the paper on immunity tradeoffs when vaccinating heavily against one strain will be a couple more days.
The Pfizer summary I linked to that came out the day I posted last says that the current vaccine works against Omicron. That was an open question because in SA, Omicron is evading natural immunity. Of course, putting it that way is misleading because as mentioned last time, just like vaccine immunity, the antibody response is only half the story, and not the most important half when considering severe disease. It's harder for viruses to evade humanity's collective cellular response than it is to evade antibodies. I'll find something Covid specific on that later.
I guess what that means for me is that, there is a selfish and a selfless reason to get vaccinated, and I think we're approaching the point where vaccination is more for selfless reasons, for those who are already fully vaccinated or who have recovered from Covid. That doesn't mean that in the long run it isn't selfish - that's the coordination problem though. when everybody has to act to prevent harm to others and only benefit indirectly.
