COVID-19: Vaccine and testing procedures Megathread Part 2 [Mod Warning - Post #1]

Hmob

mikelike wrote: »

Just one deletion ( E484K ) has practically made natural immunity useless and take down Oxford vaccine efficacy to single digits, that's what has everyone worried. Manaus Brazil has supposedly had a massive amount of re-infections over E484K, the pandemic will end but will it be with pharmacolgy alone in the next year? I think it has to be a hybrid of closed economy, travel ban and vacinations.

I don't think vaccine's alone can stop it this year.If it could China would have had 1.3 billion people vaccinated in the most impressive vaccination effort in the planet already and showed the world how great they are, but they no have no appetite for it and prefer closed economy with regional lockdown's and 14 day hotel quarantines, with a slow vaccination program, why?

You keep asking why like you know the answer

Micky 32

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hospital-reports-no-new-covid-19-cases-in-staff-after-full-vaccination-1.4479340?mode=amp

“Hospital reports no new Covid-19 cases in staff after full vaccination”

Hmob

mikelike wrote: »

Protect the vaccines with no air travel or do like AUZ and close your economy, you can't have open travel and working vaccine's right now.

And your references to china

What's that all about?

Micky 32

Hmob wrote: »

And your references to china

What's that all about?

Conspiracy waffle.

Azatadine

daydorunrun wrote: »

Link doesn’t work

Presume it's this one. Saw a report on Sky News about it yesterday too. Early days.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-israeli-drug-cured-moderate-to-serious-covid-cases-within-days-hospital/

daydorunrun

Azatadine wrote: »

Presume it's this one. Saw a report on Sky News about it yesterday too. Early days.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-israeli-drug-cured-moderate-to-serious-covid-cases-within-days-hospital/

Thanks for that- looks promising.

Hmmzis

mikelike wrote: »

Just one deletion ( E484K ) has practically made natural immunity useless and take down Oxford vaccine efficacy to single digits, that's what has everyone worried. Manaus Brazil has supposedly had a massive amount of re-infections over E484K, the pandemic will end but will it be with pharmacolgy alone in the next year? I think it has to be a hybrid of closed economy, travel ban and vacinations.

I don't think vaccine's alone can stop it this year.If it could China would have had 1.3 billion people vaccinated in the most impressive vaccination effort in the planet already and showed the world how great they are, but they no have no appetite for it and prefer closed economy with regional lockdown's and 14 day hotel quarantines, with a slow vaccination program, why?

E484K is a substitution, not a deletion. Deletions in the RBD would be the clearest sign of antibody escapism playing a role in selection.

The K there is a very easy substitution accessible via a single nucleotide flip (G->A, GAA to AAA) and can be found even in cell culture experiments that don't use antibodies to force selection. It's most likely medited by our own cellular defences (look up APOBEC like RNA editing).

The kick here is that this substitution has a very disproportionate effect on antibody neutralization activity. No other single point mutations have been found to do much of anything in this regard. Most lead to less efficient binding to hACE2 and some cause outright misfolds.

Since the neutralizing activity does not get abolished but reduced, the simplest thing to do is give people an extra booster dose a few months after the first two. The more involved one is to make an adjusted booster shot - prime with the prevalent version and boost with the less prevalent. In both cases the B cells will undergo additional rounds of mutations to give you a better antibody respone (broader with higher titers). Similar to what is being observed in convalescents getting their first vaccine shot.

Edit: btw. You are vasty overestimating China's biotech capabilities, at least on the vaccine front.

Hmmzis

In relation to the above post:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.05.21251182v1

Vaccinated+convalescent plasma neutralized even the original SARS virus. Looks like most developed anti S2 directed neutralizing antibodies, that is a very conserved part of the spike among all coronaviruses.

Jinglejangle69

Is it time to start looking at the Sputnik vaccine as a possibility?

ACitizenErased

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

Is it time to start looking at the Sputnik vaccine as a possibility?

chances of it being used in ireland are close to zero in my opinion

Hmob

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

Is it time to start looking at the Sputnik vaccine as a possibility?

Sputnik mixed with Covid has been touted as a possibility

Only requires 1 shot. It then spreads and vaccinates everybody

Jinglejangle69

Hmob wrote: »

Sputnik mixed with Covid has been touted as a possibility

Only requires 1 shot. It then spreads and vaccinates everybody

Good one.

Jinglejangle69

ACitizenErased wrote: »

chances of it being used in ireland are close to zero in my opinion

20 countries about to start using it.

Stark

Hmob wrote: »

Sputnik mixed with Covid has been touted as a possibility

Only requires 1 shot. It then spreads and vaccinates everybody

Haha, so I'm not the only one who was thinking "hey what if they add the replicating gene back into the adenovirus vector?.

Hmob

GPs very enthusiastic about vaccinating patients

Great to see it

hmmm

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

Is it time to start looking at the Sputnik vaccine as a possibility?

The Russians can't meet their existing orders or even vaccinate their own country yet. It's a fine vaccine but the constant pushing of it is a joke. We'll be swimming in the existing vaccines long before Sputnik gets into widescale production.

McGiver

Hmmzis wrote:

The K there is a very easy substitution accessible via a single nucleotide flip (G->A, GAA to AAA) and can be found even in cell culture experiments that don't use antibodies to force selection. It's most likely medited by our own cellular defences (look up APOBEC like RNA editing).

Interesting, change in just one single nucleotide. That's a tiny mutation then. There must be loads of similar ones around.

Hmmzis wrote:

The kick here is that this substitution has a very disproportionate effect on antibody neutralization activity. No other single point mutations have been found to do much of anything in this regard. Most lead to less efficient binding to hACE2 and some cause outright misfolds.

So it's basically very bad luck (for us) or very good luck (for the virus)...

Hmmzis wrote:

Since the neutralizing activity does not get abolished but reduced, the simplest thing to do is give people an extra booster dose a few months after the first two. The more involved one is to make an adjusted booster shot - prime with the prevalent version and boost with the less prevalent. In both cases the B cells will undergo additional rounds of mutations to give you a better antibody respone (broader with higher titers). Similar to what is being observed in convalescents getting their first vaccine shot.

Yes, the latter is being considered by the mRNA folks (BionTech, Moderna, Curevac) as a possible strategy makes sense and easier to do with an mRNA vaccine (faster to produce the adjusted shot), right?

Hmmzis wrote:

Edit: btw. You are vasty overestimating China's biotech capabilities, at least on the vaccine front.

I'd say so - their vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac are attenuated Sars-cov-2 based. Very old school vaccine tech.

Steve F

The vaccines that are being administered in Ireland...
how long do they pretect you from Covid19?

Jinglejangle69

hmmm wrote: »

The Russians can't meet their existing orders or even vaccinate their own country yet. It's a fine vaccine but the constant pushing of it is a joke. We'll be swimming in the existing vaccines long before Sputnik gets into widescale production.

I read earlier they have 15 million vaccines ready to go to South Africa.

Ah dunno what to believe anymore.

Cork2021

A few plants on Claire Byrne

snowstorm445

Apologies if this has been answered already, but why are all these alarming new variants only beginning to pop up now? The virus was circulating for months until vaccines happened to be developed around December and now a new "variant" seems to be popping up one after the other, each seemingly worst than the next. I know it's been mentioned that there are thousands of new variants of this disease already but why are the serious ones only beginning to crop up now?

Obviously we knew the vaccine rollout would be slow in taking shape but honestly the wait is tortuously slow. As someone who lives away from home in another European country (and Ireland is doing quite well comparatively with some of them), the notion of having to live with this draconian public health regime when going home to visit is depressing in itself, but the fact that normality is constantly being pushed out is soul-destroying. Add to that a media that is mostly self-interested in pushing the worst news to the fore to line their pockets and gloomy public health officials that are non-committal about any predictions.

I must say I have to thank some of the contributors to this thread, it's one of the few outlets of good news about this whole situation.

Cork2021

Karina Butler excellent on Claire Byrne

ACitizenErased

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

20 countries about to start using it.

Congratulations to them?

Icantthinkof1

HSE updated their website re: AstraZeneca vaccine

“..second dose will be at least:
84 days (12 full weeks) after your first dose if you get the AstraZeneca vaccine”

Azatadine

Cork2021 wrote: »

Karina Butler excellent on Claire Byrne

Yes. Such a refreshing, measured contributor.

Such a difference to McConkey et al.

Cork2021

Azatadine wrote: »

Yes. Such a refreshing, measured contributor.

Such a difference to McConkey et al.

Definitely. Can’t stand that lot!!

KrustyUCC

Icantthinkof1 wrote: »

HSE updated their website re: AstraZeneca vaccine

“..second dose will be at least:
84 days (12 full weeks) after your first dose if you get the AstraZeneca vaccine”

Same as the UK so

PhoenixParker

Icantthinkof1 wrote: »

HSE updated their website re: AstraZeneca vaccine

“..second dose will be at least:
84 days (12 full weeks) after your first dose if you get the AstraZeneca vaccine”

This isn't a delayed second dose. AZ was testedand approved for doses 4-12 weeks apart and the testing they've done suggests the longer interval is better.

ACitizenErased

KrustyUCC wrote: »

Same as the UK so

AZ vaccine is designed for that duration between doses. The issue with UK is the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine schedule.

KrustyUCC

ACitizenErased wrote: »

AZ vaccine is designed for that duration between doses. The issue with UK is the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine schedule.

Yeah that's true but we are following the UK in relation to AZ

Think we're better off sticking to what we're doing with the other two