COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[Dick Allen]

They had a Operation Warp Speed guy on and he was blaming snowstorms and holidays for the  lower than predicted vaccination totals. 
 

It’s December/January , they didn’t anticipate snow, and forgot about holidays? 
 

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Dick Allen

[Balta1701]

9 hours ago, Texsox said:

What was the government's role in developing the vaccines? 

 

Funded with $10 billion from the CARES act. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

Money for vaccine distribution and preparation was passed by the House in May of 2020 in the HEROES act but blocked by Mitch McConnell in the Senate until last week.

With no money and little guidance from Federal authorities, it was left to the same state and local health departments who are overwhelmed processing tests and death certificates  and who don’t have the resources to keep up with contact tracing for this huge number of cases to find the equipment and money to operate a vaccination program. It’s totally expected that slow going will be the result.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

Funded with $10 billion from the CARES act. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

Money for vaccine distribution and preparation was passed by the House in May of 2020 in the HEROES act but blocked by Mitch McConnell in the Senate until last week.

With no money and little guidance from Federal authorities, it was left to the same state and local health departments who are overwhelmed processing tests and death certificates  and who don’t have the resources to keep up with contact tracing for this huge number of cases to find the equipment and money to operate a vaccination program. It’s totally expected that slow going will be the result.

They were supposed to have 300k contact tracers at this point, but still only have around 70,000.

Giving credit for the vaccine but not developing the distribution system is beside the point.  You can’t just keep blaming state and local issues when an unprecedented situation calling for Federal intervention arises.

Plus, hacks like Redfield and Jared Kushner were right in the middle of all this every step of the way.  Finally, Dr. Birx allowed herself to be used as the public face of this, as well...and look where she is now.

[StrangeSox]

I'm not sure why anyone is even talking about how we can stretch out our supply right now by delaying the second dose

 

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Another study out of the UK finds that children and schools are, in fact, major transmission vectors. This should surprise absolutely no one.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tfc-children-and-transmission-update-paper-17-december-2020

Some commentary:

 

 

 

 

[StrangeSox]

 

Quote

 

I have every expectation that the pace of vaccination will pick up. But the other factor at work is the new coronavirus variant. Since I wrote that post, it’s become even more clear that yes, B.1.1.7 is indeed more infectious. The data from the UK are no longer consistent with its numbers being due to any sort of statistical accident, and it’s now been reported in numerous countries and several US states. At this point, it seems likely that it may follow the same pattern in those areas – and in the US – that it did in the United Kingdom, spreading more rapidly until it becomes the dominant strain in these populations.

That’s not good. Reports so far don’t show B.1.1.7 leading to more severe infections, but spreading the same disease we have now more quickly is still one of the last things we need. The latest data would seem to point to increased viral load in the upper respiratory tract as a big part of the problem – people are presumably shedding more infectious particles more quickly, which would certainly do it. There are many people talking about the cellular entry part of the infection process and whether B.1.1.7 is better at that, but I’m still reading up on the details. That could well be what leads to the increased viral load, but there are other possibilities, too. We’re going to know more about the details, and soon – a huge amount of work is going on in real time – but the increased R for this variant seems hard to refute.

 

Some possible mechanisms for why the B.1.1.7 variant spreads so quickly.

And some thoughts on doing the delayed dosing or half-dosing. 

Quote

 

And by “we”, I mean all of us. As mentioned, B.1.1.7 is showing up around the world, including areas whose medical capacities are already being strained. The U.S. is very much included – look, for example, at the situation in Southern California. If things go badly, we could be seeing a big wave of this variant across many parts of the country in the next weeks, and it could be spreading much faster than our vaccination program can knock things back down. We have to get ready for that possibility, and there are already proposals here to adopt the delayed-second-dose protocol. Just in the last day or so, in fact, there’s been another proposal to use 50µg doses of the Moderna vaccine instead of the 100µg doses authorized in the EUA. Moncef Slaoui pointed out that the data submitted by Moderna show that the two doses produce similar immune responses in the 18-55 age group.

That’s another one that you can say will probably work, but there are things to worry about, both in the Moderna dosage idea and the general delay-the second-dose plan. I’ve been watching some very competent people argue these points both ways: here’s Florian Krammer with the possibility that these ideas could end up generating more resistant variants of the coronavirus. The Stat article linked above has similar worries from Paul Bieniasz at Rockefeller and Isabella Eckerle in Geneva, along with other experts who still think it’s the right way to go. But the worries are not just scaremongering from randos online or anonymous bureaucrats who don’t want to fill out more forms; it’s a real possibility, and its chances have to be weighed against the effects of the greater spread of the existing variant with slower vaccination schedules. Both of these could lead to very bad outcomes. Not dosing more people could exacerbate the problem of regions getting overwhelmed with the more contagious variant, with needless deaths due to the loss of hospital capacity. But if we spread out such vaccinations too much and manage to generate another variant that partially or even completely escapes the existing vaccine response, we will be in even worse shape.

I do not know how to make this decision. I really don’t. We have degrees of harm, probabilities of harm, logistics, timing, public health capabilities, politics and more to consider, and not a lot of time in which to consider them. Anyone who uses the phrase “no-brainer” to describe this call should be dropped from your list of people to take advice from. This is the opposite: it’s a decision that all our brainpower may still not be sufficient to make clear. But we’re going to have to make it anyway.

 

B.1.1.7 and any other potential variant that spreads as fast or faster has put public health officials in a very, very difficult position. Maybe we shouldn't have let this spread to nearly every corner of the planet unchecked???

 

 

 

The UK is taking this very seriously.

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by StrangeSox

[Dick Allen]

Someone in NY just tested positive for Covid with the new variant.

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, Dick Allen said:

Someone in NY just tested positive for Covid with the new variant.

Has anyone seen how much testing we're doing to determine the genetics of the virus? Because it seems like the people who can interpret this stuff haven't said much about that, and it seems like an "open question" whether the B.1.1.7 variant is the one exploding in southern california already. 

[StrangeSox]

The US does pretty minimal sequencing. It's popped up on CO, NY, CA, FL and maybe others in community spread. Safe to assume it's everywhere or will be soon.

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, StrangeSox said:

The US does pretty minimal sequencing. It's popped up on CO, NY, CA, FL and maybe others in community spread. Safe to assume it's everywhere or will be soon.

Exactly my point, if this was the one exploding in CA right now I don't think we'd have any way of knowing that.

FWIW, on your other previous point - I think the risk of a new strain that is vaccine resistant popping up is the greatest risk we could run into. It won't be pleasant but the world knows how to handle this new strain as long as the vaccines work, we just need to buy time. Don't cut doses or anything like that - we have to kill the thing, not risk accidentally helping it more.

[southsider2k5]

4 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

The US does pretty minimal sequencing. It's popped up on CO, NY, CA, FL and maybe others in community spread. Safe to assume it's everywhere or will be soon.

If we are in the phase where people outside of the coasts are getting this without having direct international travel exposures, it is almost certainly all over the country.

[StrangeSox]

Just now, Balta1701 said:

Exactly my point, if this was the one exploding in CA right now I don't think we'd have any way of knowing that.

FWIW, on your other previous point - I think the risk of a new strain that is vaccine resistant popping up is the greatest risk we could run into. It won't be pleasant but the world knows how to handle this new strain as long as the vaccines work, we just need to buy time. Don't cut doses or anything like that - we have to kill the thing, not risk accidentally helping it more.

re: sequencing, lol

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/23/us-leads-world-coronavirus-cases-ranks-43rd-sequencing-check-variants/

 

The vaccine-resistant strain may already be here with the South African variant. It's just a preprint, but they found polyclonal antibody escape:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.424451v1
 

Quote

 

One Sentence Summary Three mutations allowed SARS-CoV-2 to evade the polyclonal antibody response of a highly neutralizing COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

 

 

UK's Matt Hannock, equivalent to HHS Secretary here, has been sounding the alarm on this variant over the past few days. There's a lot of frantic efforts right now to determine if these initial findings are accurate and how much it might impact efficacy. 

 

Getting multiple highly efficacious vaccines only to get a vaccine-resistant strain that also spreads at an accelerated pace a few weeks later would be a real gut punch.

[Balta1701]

7 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

UK's Matt Hannock, equivalent to HHS Secretary here, has been sounding the alarm on this variant over the past few days. There's a lot of frantic efforts right now to determine if these initial findings are accurate and how much it might impact efficacy. 

 

Getting multiple highly efficacious vaccines only to get a vaccine-resistant strain that also spreads at an accelerated pace a few weeks later would be a real gut punch.

I will admit not being an expert here, but I'm pretty sure the "Polycyclonal antibodies" are not nearly the same thing as the body's response to a vaccine, that's the synthetic stuff that Trump and Giuliani got that probably saved their lives.

[StrangeSox]

They got monoclonal antibodies which were artificially created versions of what your body's B cells would naturally create in response, but engineered specifically to target SARS-CoV-2 in a certain way. In a natural infection, your body generates polyclonal antibodies so it can "attack" a virus in various ways, especially a novel one. Your body might make different polyclonal antibodies in response to a natural infection versus vaccination, but that's still the basics of it. The whole goal of the vaccine is to train your immune system how to produce these polyclonal antibodies in a way that can effectively neutralize the virus. This particular preprint looked at convalescent plasma containing polyclonal antibodies from someone who had previously been infected and subjected that plasma to the new SA variant in a lab.

So if it has polyclonal antibody escape for naturally-induced immunity, we'll see reinfection rates climb drastically. If it's mutated enough in the right way that the vaccine-induced spike protein target that your body would begin producing, it could lower or remove the vaccine's ability to give you immunity.

They could probably tweak the current spike protein target in the mRNA vaccines, but that would mean anyone who's already been vaccinated and the tens of millions of doses already produced wouldn't provide as much protection against this new variant.

BBC has a decent quick summary of the concerns:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55534727

 

 

Quote

 

It is too soon to say for sure, or by how much, until more tests are completed, although it is extremely unlikely the mutations would render vaccines useless.

Dr Simon Clarke, who is an expert in cell microbiology at the University of Reading, said: "The South African variant has a number of additional mutations including changes to some of the virus' spike protein which are concerning."

The spike protein is what coronavirus uses to gain entry into human cells. It is also the bit that vaccines are designed around, which is why experts are worried about these particular mutations.

"They cause more extensive alteration of the spike protein than the changes in the Kent variant and may make the virus less susceptible to the immune response triggered by the vaccines," said Dr Clarke.

Prof Francois Balloon from University College London, said: "The E484K mutation has been shown to reduce antibody recognition. As such, it helps the virus SARS-CoV-2 to bypass immune protection provided by prior infection or vaccination."

But even in the worst case scenario, vaccines can be redesigned and tweaked to be a better match in a matter or weeks or months, if necessary, say experts.

 

 

Quote

It is already the dominant virus variant in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces of South Africa.

Other countries including Austria, Norway and Japan, have also found cases.

The UK has detected two people with the South African variant - one in London and the other in the north west of England. Both were contacts of people who travelled to South Africa.

Given how little we sequence here, there's a good chance it's in the US as well. And it appears to have the same enhanced spread mutations of the B.1.1.7 variant in the UK.

[StrangeSox]

Speaking of monoclonal antibody treatment, it's currently being severely underutilized. It needs to be given within the first week or so of symptoms to be effected, but if you manage to catch an infection right as you become symptomatic, see if you can get it.

https://www.covid19.lilly.com/bamlanivimab/getting-started

 

[Balta1701]

Over 3900 deaths were reported yesterday, some holiday catch-up but a new record one day high.

[Dick Allen]

40 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Over 3900 deaths were reported yesterday, some holiday catch-up but a new record one day high.

Breaking records. No one thought it could be done. 

[StrangeSox]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

Over 3900 deaths were reported yesterday, some holiday catch-up but a new record one day high.

Peep those projections if/when the UK and SA variants take a firmer hold in the US

 

 

 

We were so close. We have effective vaccines! But nope, gotta open everything up. Fill up the schools, indoor dining. It's safe, go out. Gotta live your lives.

 

[southsider2k5]

But i thought we would never hear about this after the election?

[Dick Allen]

15 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

But i thought we would never hear about this after the election?

Trump , his brilliant sons, and even Ted Cruz guaranteed it.

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

But i thought we would never hear about this after the election?

To be fair, I didn't hear one peep about the record death toll yesterday. It was one line in my morning news update email. 

[StrangeSox]

 

 

It's incredible how terribly Andrew Cuomo has handled almost every aspect of this

 

Edited January 7, 2021 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

 

 

 

[Balta1701]

4000!

[StrangeSox]

Oswego 308, 6th largest district in the state, proudly announced that they're abandoning the metrics recommended by health experts in the fall for their new metrics that are much more easily manipulated.

 

Quote

Sparlin said that metrics will shift from what was recommended by health experts in the fall, such as monitoring community spread, to a focus on consistent and correct use of the mitigation strategies in each school, cases connected to school transmission, staff availability, and PPE supply.

 

They will not be doing any notification or contact tracing within the schools unless you can prove you were within 6' without masks and for more than 15 minutes with an infected person, so they can very easily manipulate these numbers.

They're opening up for hybrid learning and even trying to accelerate full in-person in late January, and the superintendent announced plans to try to speed everything up. He had not even mentioned this to the teachers union before discussing this.

 

Meanwhile we're ramping back up everywhere, the B.1.1.7 UK variant is probably well-seeded throughout the country, and hospital systems are starting to be seriously strained under the pressure. Open'r up.