outgoing

I googled it but unfortunately I did a PhD in a different discipline and modified nucleotides is beyond my scope of expertise :-) This is helpful. So there is hope that it is vaccine formulation more than the variant. I could not find quickly any data of efficacy of either Moderna or Pfizer agains this lambda variant. I think we know that it is pretty good against alpha.

GadgetFreak

Mea culpa. Although for what it’s worth I despised RNA biochemistry in grad school. I think the Pfizer is close to 90% effective against the variant from India as compared to 97% effective against the original strain.

FlitBen

I would have mentioned the reference but it hits too close to home, for you are no in-series Caliban.

nk15

The Delta variant might pose the biggest threat yet to vaccinated people (msn.com)

The Delta Covid-19 Variant is Spreading: What Does This Mean For the US? (msn.com)

exp

Preprint of UK study shows loss of gray matter in some covid patients comparing brain scans before and after infection. The participants of the study had had their brains scanned before the pandemic as part of another study so the researchers had good recent baselines.


https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...in-tissue.aspx

FlitBen

Confirmation of the Regeneron MAB breakthrough.

outgoing

Well so it seems that the delta variant is spreading at a pretty astonishing rate: https://www.ft.com/content/d4abbe5e-...a-2d3efa2ed52b. Kind of crazy that it is 30%+ in US already b/c last number I remembered was like 10% and this was not long ago!

GadgetFreak

At one level not very surprising. When it was at 10% the CDC predicted that percentage would double every two weeks. That will make it close to 80% in the US by the end of July. One of the bad things about that is with it being the dominant variant more vaccinated people will get infected. A similar thing just happened in the UK.

outgoing

Meh, I was really hoping to avoid catching this stuff but now that the masks are off for the most part it's really frustrating....

GadgetFreak

At least with Delta most vaccinated people won’t catch it. But some at the edge of immune system performance will.

nk15

Like 5 days ago.

lobo411

If the number of vaccinated persons getting covid were to increase by 300%, it would still only be 0.06% of vaccinated persons.

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-in-l-a-county

ryman554

And along with the other comments, it's likely *good* that vaccinated people get exposed to other forms of the illness. Challenge that immune system and all that.. You get exposed, you fight it off successfully, you're even better prepared next time.

artemis

I wonder if those of us who've been fully vaccinated for a while would now benefit from a booster?

corporate-wage-slave

At the moment there is no evidence of immunity waning from vaccines. It wouldn't be entirely surprising if it did happen at some point, but so far measurements of things such as spike protein antibodies are holding up surprisingly well for both of the UK main vaccines, Pfizer and AstraZeneca. We don't use enough Moderna and Janssen J&J in the UK to see a trend and in any case they are late to the UK market. But people who were vaccinated with Pfizer in December and AZ in January are showing good levels of protection. We are in the midst of a Delta surge at the moment and we are not seeing many people in their 80s in Intensive Care beds, and the death rate remains close to zero. Those in their 80s had their jabs mainly in January. second jabs in March, and we got effectively complete coverage of that cohort, the actual figure being 99.7%. The UK stretched the second dose timetable to 10 to 12 weeks, and that partly explains the good figures now. We are preparing, logistically, for a booster run in the autumn of 2021, tentatively starting approx 17 October, for those over 50 starting with those over 80. But right now there isn't a clinical need for it, there isn't a piece of paper out there saying "this is definitely going to help".

Three things could change this: firstly evidence that vaccine effectiveness does actually wane, as I say it's not visible yet. In a sense that is inevitable at some point, but the vaccines are still relatively early to the market. Secondly yet another variant which like Delta has some extra attack lines, for which high immunity levels are needed rather than mediocre ones. Finally - probably the more likely at the moment - is the various "pick and mix" studies going on to see if (say) Pfizer then AZ then Moderna would be better than Pfizer + Pfizer. I am slightly sceptical of this, since in theory such a differential should only give a short term benefit, in the long run it should all even out.

For those with reduced or over active immune systems a different set of logic may apply, there are a number of studies out on this, we're expecting some results fairly soon.