Woh. This got real doomsday real fast.
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Yes. Viruses typically evolve so THEY stay alive. Killing their hosts too much doesnāt help.
We figured out smallpox, polio, the 1918 flu. I think humanity will figure this out. Just not as quickly as people would probably hope.
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Yes I hope we figure it out too. I think the 1918 flu mutated to a milder form which ended that pandemic, and is why we donāt seem to have it around anymore. This virus supposedly is more stable, maybe it will have the same fate and weāll just take longer to get there because of its stability.
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My aunt got vaccinated!! She works in a university medical office but sheās not a doctor or nurse so I bet she got lucky with some extra doses they needed to use.
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This got long
Yeahā¦ I think some of it is some overreaction on my part. Iāve really been hoping that the vaccine is going to allow us to go back to life as we knew it, and if that article is correct, Iām no longer confident in that. Iāve hunkered down pretty good for a while now. Iām going to have to rethink my whole long-term strategy if the if the vaccine is not a game changer but only changes the game a little bit. I dealt with some health issues as a child, and that gave me a desire to be as healthy as possible for the remainder of my life and not have to depend upon the healthcare system.
And, I am an engineer by training. A big part of the job is thinking about the worst thing that could possibly go wrong and making sure it doesnāt happen.
Most of us donāt want to do what weāve been doing over the long term. Not traveling, staying away from friends and family over the holidays. Kids staying home from school, that alone is taking a huge toll. Just living with the stress weāve been living with.
The wild card to me is the long term effects. I think Iāve read that those donāt just happen to people who have had severe cases, and that the percentages are pretty high, like a third, and that many people living with these issues have experienced a strong impact on their quality of life. I canāt find a reference right now, so letās hope Iām wrong.
If the vaccines can prevent the hospitals and healthcare systems from being overwhelmed, thatās a big step forward. Can it stop or prevent these long term effects? Does it make this more like a cold, and then itās gone?
For nine months, weāve worked from home, kids have not spent much time in schools. Many people will not see family and friends this holiday. Weāre traveling less, quarantining, and so on. And yet the virus has still spread. We could point at anti-maskers, but Iām not convinced that everyone masking is enough to stop this. And introducing vaccines is not going to get anti-maskers to wear masks.
If asymptomatic spread still continues even with vaccines, and vaccines donāt end the pandemic, what decisions do we make? Do we continue to isolate the way we have been? Keep schools closed, limit visits with family and friends? Iāve hunkered down pretty good. Iāve got maybe a few more months of this in me. Not years.
I donāt think Iām alone. I donāt see another end point to wait for. And when millions of us re-think what weāre willing to do, I think things change again. People gather. Hold weddings and funerals. Send the kids to school. Vacation. Visit. I donāt see how anyone doesnāt catch the virus, unless youāre willing to live under a rock until it mutates to something more harmless. That could take years. Maybe this time the hospitals are not as full because the vaccine prevents the most severe cases. But what about long-term effects?
I really, really hope the vaccine prevents the long-term effects. But Iām really scared about what the future looks like here if it doesnāt.
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I think the best we can do is trust in the scientists and doctors who are fighting this.
They, overwhelmingly, seem confident and hopeful about the multiple vaccines.
No itās not a silver bullet, but I think itās putting us (the world) in a hell of a better position than we were in before. Incremental improvements totally count.
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I think some people will have dramatic long term effects. But then as we learn about them we will develop treatments. Anyone with a chronic condition will know this wonāt be perfect. But I donāt think it will be like wards of iron lungs. I mean think of dialysis. Previously people with kidney conditions wouldnāt be able to live a reasonable life. Now itās an outpatient treatment
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I read somewhere that the strain in Africa is milder.
They may also have taken it more seriously, after Ebola and maybe another outbreak that Iām drawing a blank on.
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Thatās what I heard-- thanks to Ebola practices, systems were set up in place already, and communities were much more willing to play hardball with each other in terms of safety precautions.
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Itās not known, of course, but unlikely the new covid variants will be able to evade the immune response generated by vaccines:
" The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines induce an immune response only to the spike protein carried by the coronavirus on its surface. But each infected person produces a large, unique and complex repertoire of antibodies to this protein.
āThe fact is that you have a thousand big guns pointed at the virus,ā said Kartik Chandran, a virologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. āNo matter how the virus twists and weaves, itās not that easy to find a genetic solution that can really combat all these different antibody specificities, not to mention the other arms of the immune response.ā
In short: It will be very hard for the coronavirus to escape the bodyās defenses, despite the many variations it may adopt."
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I know someone whoās going through something very similar to what some of the long-term Covid sufferers have been experiencing, though they swear itās caused by something else and not Covid. Right now there are few treatment options. Several hospitalizations, and a couple of months out of work. Debilitating. To the point weāve had conversations about how much treatment risk they are willing to take due to
not for those who are struggling
questions about if life is still worth living if it doesnāt improve.
Ok, thatās probably why Iām so upset about this. Thanks for being here while I write this all out.
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As an RNA virus, covid is prone to mutations, but the spike protein (the part that attaches the virus to host cells) is fairly well-preserved because of its function. The mutations in the variants Iāve read about are small deletions or single amino-acid changes.
Influenza is totally different. Its docking proteins are hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N), and there are 18 known subtypes of H, and 11 of N, potentially giving 198 different subtypes:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm#:~:text=Influenza%20A%20viruses%20are%20divided,N1%20through%20N11%2C%20respectively).
Influenza is constantly swapping out H and N, which makes it so difficult to come up with a highly effective vaccine each year.
Personally, I have a rosy outlook on vaccines ending the pandemic, at least in rich countries that can afford them. I never expected that weād have 94-95% effective vaccines in under a year. The FDA was ready to give emergency authorization to vaccines that could show 50% efficacy.
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Again, donāt read if you are struggling
Summary
I appreciate states like Oregon that truly let people make this decision themselves.
If it becomes a community problem, more resources might go to it. Chronic suffers are often hidden in our society right now.
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So from talking this through with my (biochemist/antibody research) spouse, this might be the reason that the LD/SD offered better immunity. If the body mounted too much of a response with the first dose at SD concentrations and it canāt be repeated because chimpanzee adenovirus, there may have been advantages to getting a lower dose accidentally out the outset.
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A hopefully positive counterpoint to the doomsday scenario?
Just because there are a couple vaccines out there does not mean that all the other research programs stop. There are other vaccines in development stages, there is academic research happening on the structure and infection mechanisms and mutations that will aid our understanding and ability to treat or develop different vaccines. There is antibody research going on that could help with treating so more people get mild versions even if they arenāt vaccinated. Many if these things are mid research stream and weāll keep learning more in the coming months.
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And, I mean, if Covid mutates away from that spike protein, a whole lot of our problems are solved, anyway.
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Blah, please forgive my many typos! Iām sleep deprived and stuck under a very fussy baby today. Hopefully you can piece together my sentences 
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Looks like the Moderna vaccine was 63% effective at preventing asymptomatic covid, after just the first dose:
That article links to the FDA document (see page 6):
https://www.fda.gov/media/144453/download
A bit hard to interpret without confidence intervals, but eyeballing the raw numbers, Iām guessing theyāre going to be decently robust.
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63% effective is GOOD, tho right?!
Thatās better than the current flu vaccine and the flu vaccine considerably helps things.
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Yay I am glad to hear that!
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