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Yep. Spoke with someone who worked on the Moderna vaccine about this. The short of it is, the window in which the virus can / has an opportunity to mutate is s

Yep. Spoke with someone who worked on the Moderna vaccine about this. The short of it is, the window in which the virus can / has an opportunity to mutate is shortened by the vaccine. Thus, vaccinated individuals may be host to mutations if they catch COVID but given fewer “dice rolls” - if you want to call it that - would be similarly less likely to create an especially worse mutation. Couple that with the reduction of spread given by vaccines, and the difference is staggering. This paper is being wildly misinterpreted and cherry-picked by people who aren’t involved in the science, or qualified to consume it.

f6v 5y ago
> This paper is being wildly misinterpreted and cherry-picked by people who aren’t involved in the science, or qualified to consume it. These days everyone is a vaccine expert and climate change scholar.
- ryanobjc 5y ago
  I’m a bit concerned as to what it really says that this is front over material on hn. The short of it, is suspect a substantial sub population here are holding a variety of opinions that ultimately result in vaccine reluctantance. While the numbers aren’t so fast as to be significant to public health, I do think it forms a sort of idea laundering or affirmation by social proof. In other words people are using the reputation of hacker news for having smart people to launder and promote anti vax.
  - haswell 5y ago
    And yet, the problematic aspects of the paper are being highlighted by the readers here. Many things make it to the front page of HN because they’re interesting. That doesn’t mean that the readership is endorsing problematic viewpoints.
  - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    Interesting you're so focused on the "vaccine hesistancy" side of the fence. Do you have any concerns about people using their prestigious degrees and credentials to frighten the population completely out of proportion with their actual risk from a pathogen, in order to persuade them to comply with top-down public health measures? It sounds a lot like you just don't like the conclusion that this classic paper leads to: that the "societal benefit" of mass vaccination with an imperfect vaccine is not nearly as clear-cut as many have been led to believe. My advice to people is to treat the vaccines as a personal risk reduction tool and little else. The only way to actually guarantee you won't infect someone you interact with, is to have acquired (and recovered from) the natural SARS-2 virus, which will build robust immunity. As far as immunity to reinfection, looking at antibodies alone, IgG levels stay seropositive for ~3.5 years: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.18.20156810v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.18.20156810v... > Based on these half-life data, we estimate that the median times for IgM, IgA and IgG to become seronegative are 4.59 (IQR 4.12-5.03), 7.78 (IQR 6.71-9.16) and 42.72 (IQR 33.75-47.96) months post disease onset. > This study suggests that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces robust neutralizing and binding antibody responses in patients and that humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2 acquired by infection may persist for a relatively long time. and furthermore once those IgG levels fade you will still have immunological memory, which lasts basically forever and allows your system to much more rapidly and effectively respond to future infection, leading you to have a much lower peak viral load, lessened symptoms (usually fully asymptomatic) and therefore a near inability to transmit the virus. For example for the 1918 flu, immunological memory has been shown to persist 60+ years later: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/08/researchers-find-long-lived-immunity-1918-pandemic-virus https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/08/research...
    - f6v 5y ago
      There’s no way for public to make vaccination decisions on their own. They just don’t have the knowledge and the skills to interpret the data. I mean, it’d be silly if we said: “Hey, you’ve got colon cancer? You could do chemo or surgery. Your pick!”. And unlike cancer, pandemic has impact not only on your health, but on others too.
prox 5y ago
Today’s askscience said exactly what you are saying, for those who want to read : https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ozh9mi/is_the_delta_variant_a_result_of_covid_evolving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ozh9mi/is_the_d...
thisiscorrect 5y ago
Is it possible that it gets fewer dice rolls but the "dice are loaded" by the fact that a vaccinated but contagious case is likelier to spread only selected mutations? Isn't that the concept of immune escape[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_escape
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  Exactly this. Insofar as the vaccines actually worked to protect people who had never acquired SARS-2, an even somewhat vaccine-evading mutation has a sizeable population of real-SARS-2-naive individuals to spread through (i.e. the vaccinated who never had natural infection). This is why I and others have opposed the concept of mass vaccination for an endemic highly-spreading respiratory virus. It simply doesn't make sense unless you can develop a vaccine comparable to natural immunity (both in magnitude of immune response but also robustness/resiliency to mutations; over the long-term the current vaccines offer neither). SARS-2's risk is incredibly well bounded; we have a great idea of who is truly vulnerable and who would have to get struck by lightning 8 times in a row to be seriously harmed. We should have recognized that fact from the beginning; but recognizing that fact runs counter to the narrative required to scare the whole population enough to accept lockdowns/etc.
  - loopz 5y ago
    That fantasy vaccine doesn't exist, and what if it triggers auto-immune syndrome?
    - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
      I mean, I agree. I have serious concerns about the potential for over-sensitizing the adaptive immune system, even with the current vaccines. I also fundamentally disagree with vaccinating just against the spike protein rather than the whole virus (particularly given how immunogenic and therefore pathogenic the spike is; we're injecting [genetic material that codes for] the most dangerous part of the virus with these vaccines IMO) I'm just pointing out how effective the vaccines would have to be for this strategy to make sense (and that's ignoring the whole matter of people that refuse to get vaccinated against COVID, like me). Simply put the whole strategy doesn't make sense on utilitarian grounds. I don't need to invoke any libertarian principles to argue against why this is so insane. Side tangent: Unfortunately many who are on my side of the fence as far as skepticism of mass vaccination, believe equally absurd things like the notion that we can eradicate SARS-2 by having the whole world all take ivermectin at the same time. This idea was non-ironically advocated for by Bret Weinstein...

f6v 5y ago

> This paper is being wildly misinterpreted and cherry-picked by people who aren’t involved in the science, or qualified to consume it. These days everyone is a vaccine expert and climate change scholar.

ryanobjc 5y ago
I’m a bit concerned as to what it really says that this is front over material on hn. The short of it, is suspect a substantial sub population here are holding a variety of opinions that ultimately result in vaccine reluctantance. While the numbers aren’t so fast as to be significant to public health, I do think it forms a sort of idea laundering or affirmation by social proof. In other words people are using the reputation of hacker news for having smart people to launder and promote anti vax.
- haswell 5y ago
  And yet, the problematic aspects of the paper are being highlighted by the readers here. Many things make it to the front page of HN because they’re interesting. That doesn’t mean that the readership is endorsing problematic viewpoints.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  Interesting you're so focused on the "vaccine hesistancy" side of the fence. Do you have any concerns about people using their prestigious degrees and credentials to frighten the population completely out of proportion with their actual risk from a pathogen, in order to persuade them to comply with top-down public health measures? It sounds a lot like you just don't like the conclusion that this classic paper leads to: that the "societal benefit" of mass vaccination with an imperfect vaccine is not nearly as clear-cut as many have been led to believe. My advice to people is to treat the vaccines as a personal risk reduction tool and little else. The only way to actually guarantee you won't infect someone you interact with, is to have acquired (and recovered from) the natural SARS-2 virus, which will build robust immunity. As far as immunity to reinfection, looking at antibodies alone, IgG levels stay seropositive for ~3.5 years: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.18.20156810v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.18.20156810v... > Based on these half-life data, we estimate that the median times for IgM, IgA and IgG to become seronegative are 4.59 (IQR 4.12-5.03), 7.78 (IQR 6.71-9.16) and 42.72 (IQR 33.75-47.96) months post disease onset. > This study suggests that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces robust neutralizing and binding antibody responses in patients and that humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2 acquired by infection may persist for a relatively long time. and furthermore once those IgG levels fade you will still have immunological memory, which lasts basically forever and allows your system to much more rapidly and effectively respond to future infection, leading you to have a much lower peak viral load, lessened symptoms (usually fully asymptomatic) and therefore a near inability to transmit the virus. For example for the 1918 flu, immunological memory has been shown to persist 60+ years later: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/08/researchers-find-long-lived-immunity-1918-pandemic-virus https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/08/research...
  - f6v 5y ago
    There’s no way for public to make vaccination decisions on their own. They just don’t have the knowledge and the skills to interpret the data. I mean, it’d be silly if we said: “Hey, you’ve got colon cancer? You could do chemo or surgery. Your pick!”. And unlike cancer, pandemic has impact not only on your health, but on others too.

prox 5y ago

Today’s askscience said exactly what you are saying, for those who want to read : https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ozh9mi/is_the_delta_variant_a_result_of_covid_evolving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ozh9mi/is_the_d...

thisiscorrect 5y ago

Is it possible that it gets fewer dice rolls but the "dice are loaded" by the fact that a vaccinated but contagious case is likelier to spread only selected mutations? Isn't that the concept of immune escape[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_escape

__blockcipher__ 5y ago
Exactly this. Insofar as the vaccines actually worked to protect people who had never acquired SARS-2, an even somewhat vaccine-evading mutation has a sizeable population of real-SARS-2-naive individuals to spread through (i.e. the vaccinated who never had natural infection). This is why I and others have opposed the concept of mass vaccination for an endemic highly-spreading respiratory virus. It simply doesn't make sense unless you can develop a vaccine comparable to natural immunity (both in magnitude of immune response but also robustness/resiliency to mutations; over the long-term the current vaccines offer neither). SARS-2's risk is incredibly well bounded; we have a great idea of who is truly vulnerable and who would have to get struck by lightning 8 times in a row to be seriously harmed. We should have recognized that fact from the beginning; but recognizing that fact runs counter to the narrative required to scare the whole population enough to accept lockdowns/etc.
- loopz 5y ago
  That fantasy vaccine doesn't exist, and what if it triggers auto-immune syndrome?
  - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    I mean, I agree. I have serious concerns about the potential for over-sensitizing the adaptive immune system, even with the current vaccines. I also fundamentally disagree with vaccinating just against the spike protein rather than the whole virus (particularly given how immunogenic and therefore pathogenic the spike is; we're injecting [genetic material that codes for] the most dangerous part of the virus with these vaccines IMO) I'm just pointing out how effective the vaccines would have to be for this strategy to make sense (and that's ignoring the whole matter of people that refuse to get vaccinated against COVID, like me). Simply put the whole strategy doesn't make sense on utilitarian grounds. I don't need to invoke any libertarian principles to argue against why this is so insane. Side tangent: Unfortunately many who are on my side of the fence as far as skepticism of mass vaccination, believe equally absurd things like the notion that we can eradicate SARS-2 by having the whole world all take ivermectin at the same time. This idea was non-ironically advocated for by Bret Weinstein...