🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

@trinsec

It doesnt take much vaccination for a variant to take hold. Consider the data. India began vaccinating in january of this year. Likewise delta variant began to be detected in very small prevelance in january as well. As the vacination rate of india grew so did the delta variant. By the time vaccination rate reached 20% then the delta variant finally became the dominant variant crossing the 50% threshold. As of today about 50% of india is vaccinated and delta variant is now pretty much the only strain in the wild with high 90's percentage range of prevelance.

So yea vaccination in india directly correlated and strongly correlated with the delta variant spreading.

@Pat

@trinsec

> It depends on how far those mutations go. The delta variant is still affected by the current vaccine as in that the vaccine is still (largely, partially) effective enough to reduce the chance for the most terrible results.

There is no good data that supports this assertion. Older indirect data that made a weak argument (but the only data we had at the time) would suggest this was true. Newer data that actually has sampled people and examined their viral load, so much more direct data, suggests the vaccine does **not** actually help fight the delta varient at all.

The data is too new to make any solid assertions either way, but as we discussed the earlier suggestion that the vaccine helps with delta is now showing to more likely be completely false.

> Herd immunity is already out of the window, we're not going for that at all. We're using the vaccine to prevent ending up in the hospital in the first place, the very hospital that's now already overflowing. So trying to avoid ending up in the hospital in itself is already a very big thing.

Thats the problem, recent data suggest the vaccine isnt keeping us out of the hospital at all. Delta in and of itself just has less people int he hospital if your vaccinated or not. The people who wind up in the hospital lean towards being unvaccinated most likely due to other factors (for example unvaccinated people are less likely to socially distance as they are more likely to dismiss the virus).

This is why direct evidence is so much more important than indirect evidence. Its easy to assume looking at who winds up in the hospital that the vaccine might be effective, but being indirect evidence there are a host of other explanations for it as well (such as the one I just gave).. but the direct evidence, that suggests the vaccine has no effect at all on Delta.. so that is the stronger evidence.

@Pat

@trinsec

To give you some perspective the first vaccine caused the virus to shift from its original form to the delta variant. This is approximately 3x to 4x more contagious than the original virus.

The more contagious a virus is the more people need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

Which means if we keep using the same vaccination approach as a "temporary" measure, with continually creating new variants of vaccine to combat each new virus, then you will get ever increasing R0 numbers (how contagious it is).

By the time we have a solution that might work the thing will be so damn contagious that the herd immunity threshold will be too high to reasonably reach and despite the vaccine being effective we will no longer be able to fight the virus anyway.

Its like the antibiotic problem but instead of evolving over the course of decades it evolves over the course of months. I'm not sure you realize just how devestating going the vaccine route will be as long as it only remains a temporary option.

@Pat

@trinsec

vaccines are basically a short term solution that makes the long-term problem worse. So regardless of if it helps short term I feel we shouldnt continue down that rabbit hole unless we can fix the problems with the first go around

@Pat

@Pat
There is no doubt resperators will decrease cases if used properly (they often arent but thats another matter). So it would mean less invesment in ventilators and ICU and more managable rates.

That said I dont think respirators are where we should focus anymore. Not because they fail to work but because it isnt reasonable to expect the world to wear respirators for the rest of our lives (or on and off for the res tof our lives).

If it were up to me we would ditch resperators, ditch vaccines, ditch social distancing, just go back to acting like the virus doesnt exist. Divert all of that money into expanding ICU wars and increasing our stock of ventilators. Wear a mask or respirator in nursing homes or around elderly but otherwise just let the virus run its course.

@trinsec

@trinsec

Thats fair. But that mostly just boils down tot he fact that your government cant stop quibbling... Lets not pretend the solution is impossible. Politics just refuses to do what it needs to.

I blame a lot of it on the medical community which is trying so hard to get everyone to conform they sell everything as absolute fact when the truth is we are kinda just making educated guesses of minimal info. The end result is that when new data questions the earlier assumptions they refuse to back peddle.

We are so committed to vaccines being the solution right now that it would be career suicide for a medical worker to actually suggest we let the virus run its course and focus on supportive care. The narrative has been repeated too many times to backpeddle now for fear of loosing public trust.

@Pat

@trinsec

What im hearing is not that #2 isnt an option there, its that politicians are idiots and didnt execute on #2... big difference.

And yea improving ICU capacity is a huge cost. Expecting other countries to be able to support their own increased capacity AND yours isnt going to work. The netherlands needs to execute on #2 rather than bickering about what to do :)

@Pat

@Pat

Mutation rate is a function of a few things, the number of times the virus replicates, the viral load produced when it replicates, and the accuracy of the transcription. The vaccine does **not** cause the mutation rate to increase. What vaccines cause is mutations to be **selected for**, thats where people get confused. When mutations arent selected for then they happen all the time and almost all of them will just die off as quickly as they come into existance. When they are selected for, however, then even if far fewer mutations occur the ones that do occur stand a much higher chance of proliferating once they come into existance. Thats the problem.

@trinsec

@trinsec In my nearly 4 decades of life I have yet to see a single problem solved that didnt involve a nipple.

@trinsec

Doing nothing isnt an option, but the choices arent vaccination or nothing.

If it were up to me my focus would be on supportive medicine. Forget about masks, or vaccines, or any of that. Instead invest all that money on 1) researching cures such as transcription inhibitors that may provide a solution where vaccines wont 2) dump tons of money into building new respirators and space in hospitals so we can handle the increased load on the medical system until we find a solution.

@Pat

@trinsec I'm in shape too, my shape is about the same shape as Columbus thought the shape of the earth was. To quote columbus:

"I found it (the world) was not round . . . but pear shaped, round where it has a nipple, for there it is taller, or as if one had a round ball and, on one side, it should be like a woman's breast, and this nipple part is the highest and closest to Heaven."

@Pat

Its a horrible disease, I understand the outrage. You know my take on it, at this point the lockdowns and masks are as bad as the death toll, so im mad at all of it.

@trinsec

@trinsec

For boosters to buy us time at all we would need to engineer a new RNA sequence every 3 - 6 months. Usually vaccine testing takes longer than this so the only way boosters will really be effective (most likely) is if we throw the usual safety testing out the window.

That said also keep in mind that while boosters may buy us some time it means every new booster that targets the new strain will likely give rise to a newer even worse strain. So you may find going that path doesnt buy us time at all but pushes the virus evolution to the point where the problem becomes even harder to solve and in the end make matters much much worse (potentially)

While you are right the virus mutates regardless of boosters, and that the vaccine doesnt **cause** the mutation what the vaccine does do is it causes new mutations to be **selected for**. This means that without a vaccine new mutations will come, be very low prevelance (well below 0.1%) and then die off as they cant compete against the pathway of the original virus. The vaccine however gets rid of the base virus and thus allows the new strain to become selected for at which point you will see its prevalence skyrocket nearly over night from <0.1% to 99%, the exact opposite of dying off. This is exactly what happened with Delta.

The other thing about boosters is two fold 1) as with all coronaviruses immunity tends to be temporary (anywhere from weeks to a few years) so you need a booster that is the same as the original every few months 2) coronaviruses mutate fairly quickly so you also get new strains arising. Meaning you need to double-dose, one booster every few months for the old strain AND new boosters you have to start repeating for new strains.

Point is, if you go down the vaccination route it becomes unmanageable very quickly.

@Pat

@Pat

Polio virus isnt comparable. They are of the class Picornavirus which are quite easy to vaccinate against. Corona class viruses are entirely different category and have never been able to be vaccinated against perminately no matter how many doses you take.

@trinsec

@Pat

That too yes :) I recall we talked it through and ultimately found your opinion acceptable. You were also a bit more angry than usual at the time since mask mandates had just been lifted which seemed to rile you a bit.

@trinsec

@trinsec You arent out of shape, pear is a shape!

@trinsec

When i explained my concerns in the past I did go into detail on boosters. What I had said at the time is that for a vaccine to have any potential of working it would need boosters that would likely need to be very frequent, on the order of every 3 months to 6 months, which is not practical as a long term solution and overtime presents ever increasing risk since the nature of mutation of corona class viruses are not like flu viruses. A flu virus undergoes recombination and thus its next gen viruses are not any more deadly or specialized, they just make the vaccine less effective. Corona class viruses as they mutate to stay ahead of vaccines undergo a more classical form of mutation and as such create an ever increasing risk as you vaccinate against it, presuming you even find a booster every 6 months to be palatable at all.

@Pat

@Pat

At the time I think i missed the hashtag that said joke honestly. Or I think you posted a less joke-like statement that was similar in the days prior.

@trinsec