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The dominant strain of Covid in South Africa is different and existing vaccines are far less effective at countering due to changes in the spike protein which t

by stirlo 6y ago

The dominant strain of Covid in South Africa is different and existing vaccines are far less effective at countering due to changes in the spike protein which these vaccines target. The effectiveness against this strain is not 60-80% as it is against the other strains but below 50% which was the standard the WHO chose as a acceptable vaccine. South Africa has limited health resources and spending them rolling out an ineffective vaccine when they have orders for the Johnson and Johnson one coming next month doesn't make sense.

The_rationalist 6y ago
Saving lifes for a month doesn't make sense?
- Infinitesimus 6y ago
  Depends on the cost. If they use resources to roll out am ineffective vaccine now to the detriment of future attempts to roll out effective options, waiting might be a better choice. Also, there is enough vaccine skepticism in the world today and I'm not sure vast distribution of something with questionable efficacy is necessarily a good idea.
- babesh 6y ago
  Read the comment by Clewza313. The vaccine doesn’t seem to protect the people in the study (young people). Young people don’t tend to die from covid. They don’t know if it would work on older people but I would think it wouldn’t either. This doesn’t look like it actually saves lives. The study may be early to really tell but so far there is no evidence that the vaccine works at all against the variant that is widespread in South Africa.
- necovek 6y ago
  That's too simplistic: getting hundreds of thousands of at-risk people mixing with others in order to get a shot of an ineffective vaccine — I imagine the net result wouldn't be saving any lives at a cost of delaying alternative vaccines for these people for longer (I guess interactions between them have been even less tested).
hinkley 6y ago
> The effectiveness against this strain is not 60-80% as it is against the other strains but below 50% which was the standard the WHO chose as a acceptable vaccine. Just how stupid are we, really? We're all locked up due to a virus that went around the world in months. If there's a variant anywhere that the vaccines don't work on, then this is just a selective breeding program we're setting up. We'll all get the vaccine and then go out and catch the new one because we stopped the quarantine.
- tempestn 6y ago
  It's possible all the experts are stupid, or that you don't have as deep an understanding of the situation as they do. Which is more likely? That may come across as glib, but seriously, occasionally when it seems like the expert consensus makes no sense, it indeed doesn't. Most of the time though it's just that you don't have the necessary knowledge and experience to effectively evaluate the expert position. In this case, yes, as people are vaccinated, variants that evade vaccines will spread more easily than others. From what we've seen so far, these same variants tend to be more contagious regardless, so that likely would have been the case anyway. By vaccinating though, you achieve a few things. First, you protect people from the variants that are susceptible, saving a lot of lives in the short term. Second, you massively cut down transmissions of the virus, each of which gives it an opportunity to mutate and produce new variants. Third, in most cases, you do provide some protection even against resistant variants. And finally, just as the virus is not static, neither will be the vaccines. Work is already underway to update all the major vaccines to cover the new variants, and that process should be much faster than creating the initial vaccines (in design, trials, and roll-out). So it will be possible to vaccinate against variants that evade current vaccines. Yes, it will take a while, and it would be nice if the virus would just sit still and not mutate. But we're still far, far better off with vaccines than without them. You are correct though that other measures will need to remain in place for some time as well.
  - hedora 6y ago
    Many experts agreed with Hinkley at the beginning of this. They tended to be deplatformed or fired by politicians trying to sell a cure for the (extremely uncommon) cold. Any introductory textbook on virology will explain that we can’t cure influenza, rhinovirus or coronavirus for exactly the reasons Hinkley outlined. In related news, the press doesn’t do interviews with virologists. Instead, they talk to epidemiologists, sociologists and psychiatrists. That’s strange, since those people aren’t experts on viruses, and they certainly aren’t experts on coronavirus. Where are the articles that consult coronavirus experts? It’s been a field of study for decades.
easytiger 6y ago
AZ has however been shown to be effective against a very similar variant in a wider study https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-works-against-uk-variant-oxford-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-wo...
- stirlo 6y ago
  The UK and South African variants are actually not all that similar. Only the South African variant has large changes to the spike protein. This is why the UK is putting so much effort into stopping the spread of the SA variant right now. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/uk-begins-testing-thousands-for-covid-variant/13115608 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/uk-begins-testing-tho... Also in a scary development a large portion of trial participants in South Africa were actually reinfected with the new strain because it's so different. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/02/05/virus-variant-reinfection-south-africa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/02/05/virus-varia...
  - easytiger 6y ago
    The E484K mutation exists in plenty of other variants. Including in B.1.1.7 (Kent).
    - stirlo 6y ago
      "UK 'Kent' variant with the E484K mutation - it was seen in 11 out of 214,159 samples"[1] There's been only a handful of cases with that variation in the UK, it is not the dominant strain which the AstraZeneca results you referred to came from. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55900625 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55900625
      - easytiger 6y ago
        So despite much heralded increased transmissibility, it has failed to prove dominant despite being incidental in timeline with b117. No great artistry will make it more fearsome than the lack of proof thereof.
lbeltrame 6y ago
> The dominant strain of Covid in South Africa is different and existing vaccines are far less effective at countering due to changes in the spike protein which these vaccines target. Only Johnson&Johnson data may say something about it for real. Novavax's investigation was underpowered (4000 people, wide confidence intervals), and this one is even more so. The rest of the evidence comes from antibody neutralization assays in vitro, which although very useful they are not representative of the whole immune response.

by stirlo 6y ago

The_rationalist 6y ago

Saving lifes for a month doesn't make sense?

Infinitesimus 6y ago
Depends on the cost. If they use resources to roll out am ineffective vaccine now to the detriment of future attempts to roll out effective options, waiting might be a better choice. Also, there is enough vaccine skepticism in the world today and I'm not sure vast distribution of something with questionable efficacy is necessarily a good idea.
babesh 6y ago
Read the comment by Clewza313. The vaccine doesn’t seem to protect the people in the study (young people). Young people don’t tend to die from covid. They don’t know if it would work on older people but I would think it wouldn’t either. This doesn’t look like it actually saves lives. The study may be early to really tell but so far there is no evidence that the vaccine works at all against the variant that is widespread in South Africa.
necovek 6y ago
That's too simplistic: getting hundreds of thousands of at-risk people mixing with others in order to get a shot of an ineffective vaccine — I imagine the net result wouldn't be saving any lives at a cost of delaying alternative vaccines for these people for longer (I guess interactions between them have been even less tested).

hinkley 6y ago

> The effectiveness against this strain is not 60-80% as it is against the other strains but below 50% which was the standard the WHO chose as a acceptable vaccine. Just how stupid are we, really? We're all locked up due to a virus that went around the world in months. If there's a variant anywhere that the vaccines don't work on, then this is just a selective breeding program we're setting up. We'll all get the vaccine and then go out and catch the new one because we stopped the quarantine.

tempestn 6y ago
It's possible all the experts are stupid, or that you don't have as deep an understanding of the situation as they do. Which is more likely? That may come across as glib, but seriously, occasionally when it seems like the expert consensus makes no sense, it indeed doesn't. Most of the time though it's just that you don't have the necessary knowledge and experience to effectively evaluate the expert position. In this case, yes, as people are vaccinated, variants that evade vaccines will spread more easily than others. From what we've seen so far, these same variants tend to be more contagious regardless, so that likely would have been the case anyway. By vaccinating though, you achieve a few things. First, you protect people from the variants that are susceptible, saving a lot of lives in the short term. Second, you massively cut down transmissions of the virus, each of which gives it an opportunity to mutate and produce new variants. Third, in most cases, you do provide some protection even against resistant variants. And finally, just as the virus is not static, neither will be the vaccines. Work is already underway to update all the major vaccines to cover the new variants, and that process should be much faster than creating the initial vaccines (in design, trials, and roll-out). So it will be possible to vaccinate against variants that evade current vaccines. Yes, it will take a while, and it would be nice if the virus would just sit still and not mutate. But we're still far, far better off with vaccines than without them. You are correct though that other measures will need to remain in place for some time as well.
- hedora 6y ago
  Many experts agreed with Hinkley at the beginning of this. They tended to be deplatformed or fired by politicians trying to sell a cure for the (extremely uncommon) cold. Any introductory textbook on virology will explain that we can’t cure influenza, rhinovirus or coronavirus for exactly the reasons Hinkley outlined. In related news, the press doesn’t do interviews with virologists. Instead, they talk to epidemiologists, sociologists and psychiatrists. That’s strange, since those people aren’t experts on viruses, and they certainly aren’t experts on coronavirus. Where are the articles that consult coronavirus experts? It’s been a field of study for decades.

easytiger 6y ago

AZ has however been shown to be effective against a very similar variant in a wider study https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-works-against-uk-variant-oxford-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-wo...

stirlo 6y ago
The UK and South African variants are actually not all that similar. Only the South African variant has large changes to the spike protein. This is why the UK is putting so much effort into stopping the spread of the SA variant right now. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/uk-begins-testing-thousands-for-covid-variant/13115608 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/uk-begins-testing-tho... Also in a scary development a large portion of trial participants in South Africa were actually reinfected with the new strain because it's so different. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/02/05/virus-variant-reinfection-south-africa/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/02/05/virus-varia...
- easytiger 6y ago
  The E484K mutation exists in plenty of other variants. Including in B.1.1.7 (Kent).
  - stirlo 6y ago
    "UK 'Kent' variant with the E484K mutation - it was seen in 11 out of 214,159 samples"[1] There's been only a handful of cases with that variation in the UK, it is not the dominant strain which the AstraZeneca results you referred to came from. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55900625 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55900625
    - easytiger 6y ago
      So despite much heralded increased transmissibility, it has failed to prove dominant despite being incidental in timeline with b117. No great artistry will make it more fearsome than the lack of proof thereof.

lbeltrame 6y ago

> The dominant strain of Covid in South Africa is different and existing vaccines are far less effective at countering due to changes in the spike protein which these vaccines target. Only Johnson&Johnson data may say something about it for real. Novavax's investigation was underpowered (4000 people, wide confidence intervals), and this one is even more so. The rest of the evidence comes from antibody neutralization assays in vitro, which although very useful they are not representative of the whole immune response.