Covid-19 Vaccine - Where, How & Costs

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In the U.S., we are required to wait on site for 15 minutes after each shot to make sure there is no bad reaction.

And since I didn't fall over I guess that means I'm OK. :)
 
Lambda Covid variant’s ‘unusual’ mutations puzzle scientists (ft.com, registration or subscription may be required)
Lambda Covid variant’s ‘unusual’ mutations puzzle scientists | Financial Times
Lambda, the latest coronavirus variant to draw the attention of the World Health Organization, is worrying officials in Latin America and puzzling scientists because of its “unusual” set of mutations.
Formerly known as C.37, the Lambda variant was first detected late last year in Peru, and has since spread to 27 countries, including the UK. Public Health England this week said it had been identified “across” the country, although the number of cases it had identified remained small.

The WHO in June named Lambda as the seventh “variant of interest” so far. The global health body believes such strains are less of a threat than its four “variants of concern” — Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta originally detected in the UK, South Africa, Brazil and India respectively — but says they still need to be monitored closely.
A week later, on June 23, PHE in the UK designated Lambda as a variant under investigation “due to international expansion and several notable mutations”. PHE stressed there was currently no evidence Lambda caused more severe disease or rendered vaccines less effective.
 
And those risks haven't been helped by fiascos like the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which severely hampered at best track and trace programs, especially app based ones.

As far as I can tell the only people who truly screwed up their app based test and trace were the UK, by 1) trying to ignore the Apple/Android data models, and 2) trying for an 'is this even possible' level of technology - estimating contact distance from bluetooth signal strength, which required modelling the signal output of every brand of phone on the market*. The combination had Cummings' fingerprints all over it.

Meanwhile, the Dutch app completely sidestepped GDPR, by setting things up so the data held wasn't personal and therefore under GDPR, while any attempt to link it to an identified individual was 1) illegal and 2) would bring it straight back under GDPR.

* All but turning every phone into an emitter-locator system!
 
Lambda Covid variant’s ‘unusual’ mutations puzzle scientists (ft.com, registration or subscription may be required)
Lambda Covid variant’s ‘unusual’ mutations puzzle scientists | Financial Times
Lambda, the latest coronavirus variant to draw the attention of the World Health Organization, is worrying officials in Latin America and puzzling scientists because of its “unusual” set of mutations.
Formerly known as C.37, the Lambda variant was first detected late last year in Peru, and has since spread to 27 countries, including the UK. Public Health England this week said it had been identified “across” the country, although the number of cases it had identified remained small.

The WHO in June named Lambda as the seventh “variant of interest” so far. The global health body believes such strains are less of a threat than its four “variants of concern” — Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta originally detected in the UK, South Africa, Brazil and India respectively — but says they still need to be monitored closely.
A week later, on June 23, PHE in the UK designated Lambda as a variant under investigation “due to international expansion and several notable mutations”. PHE stressed there was currently no evidence Lambda caused more severe disease or rendered vaccines less effective.


OOh! OoH! Just in time for the weekend!!! More fear! More fear! Meanwhile, I'll just carry on...
 
And those risks haven't been helped by fiascos like the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which severely hampered at best track and trace programs, especially app based ones.

As far as I can tell the only people who truly screwed up their app based test and trace were the UK, by 1) trying to ignore the Apple/Android data models, and 2) trying for an 'is this even possible' level of technology - estimating contact distance from bluetooth signal strength, which required modelling the signal output of every brand of phone on the market*. The combination had Cummings' fingerprints all over it.

Meanwhile, the Dutch app completely sidestepped GDPR, by setting things up so the data held wasn't personal and therefore under GDPR, while any attempt to link it to an identified individual was 1) illegal and 2) would bring it straight back under GDPR.

* All but turning every phone into an emitter-locator system!

Respectfully, if it can't be used reliably it can't be used. In the U.S., if it's not easily understood, well... Things aren't used.
 
Recent paper on the Lambda variant from Chile. This variant is already present in the U.K amongst 27 countries.

Infectivity and immune escape of the new SARS-CoV-2 variant of interest Lambda

ABSTRACT
Background The newly described SARS-CoV-2 lineage C.37 was recently classified as a variant of interest by the WHO (Lambda variant) based on its high circulation rates in South American countries and the presence of critical mutations in the spike protein. The impact of such mutations in infectivity and immune escape from neutralizing antibodies are entirely unknown.
Methods We performed a pseudotyped virus neutralization assay and determined the impact of the Lambda variant on infectivity and immune escape using plasma samples from healthcare workers (HCW) from two centers in Santiago, Chile who received the two-doses scheme of the inactivated virus vaccine CoronaVac.
Results We observed an increased infectivity mediated by the Lambda spike protein that was even higher than that of the D614G (lineage B) or the Alpha and Gamma variants. Compared to the Wild type (lineage A), neutralization was decreased by 3.05-fold for the Lambda variant while it was 2.33-fold for the Gamma variant and 2.03-fold for the Alpha variant.
Conclusions Our results indicate that mutations present in the spike protein of the Lambda variant of interest confer increased infectivity and immune escape from neutralizing antibodies elicited by CoronaVac. These data reinforce the idea that massive vaccination campaigns in countries with high SARS-CoV-2 circulation must be accompanied by strict genomic surveillance allowing the identification of new isolates carrying spike mutations and immunology studies aimed to determine the impact of these mutations in immune escape and vaccines breakthrough.


There’s a good article for context on the FT site but it’s hidden behind a paywall.
Luckily this quotes from that article.

 
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Basically we just don’t know about this variant so it seems a bit early for the media to be sounding the fear klaxon.
 
In the U.S., we are required to wait on site for 15 minutes after each shot to make sure there is no bad reaction.

And since I didn't fall over I guess that means I'm OK. :)

Same here. That's merely intended to guard against a potential allergic reaction (where onset would be virtually immediate) though, the time is much too short to deal with "proper" side effects. By way of an example, in my case it took 14 hours for symptoms beyond arm pain to appear, and 18h to knock me out.
 
I hat no Problems after both Jobs of BioNtech/Pfizer no headache, fever etc.

Now i am worried that it isn t working...
Don’t not everyone reacts.:)

Sorry forgot the Irony empji
Well, it was the same for me after J&J. I was a bit anxious that I had none of the effects reported.
I wonder if that is not more related to the way it is administred. I know @Flyaway made some posts on the subject a while ago.

Well I didn't have any reaction to the two AZ jabs but I bloody well felt the needle on the second........
I had the shakes with my first AZ- I was warned but didn't pay any heed- 8 hours after my first jab my hands shook so hard I had to hold onto a glass with both hands - it only lasted a few minutes then just felt like the flu for the next few hours, then just tired. After the 2nd jab I just felt a bit tired.
 
Looks like there is now a real campaign to apply pressure to the unvaccinated in the US through the media. Just hope it works though I think there will always be a hardcore of the utterly deluded.

 
In the U.S., we are required to wait on site for 15 minutes after each shot to make sure there is no bad reaction.

And since I didn't fall over I guess that means I'm OK. :)

Same here. That's merely intended to guard against a potential allergic reaction (where onset would be virtually immediate) though, the time is much too short to deal with "proper" side effects. By way of an example, in my case it took 14 hours for symptoms beyond arm pain to appear, and 18h to knock me out.

It can be quicker, my reaction to the second jab - struggling to keep my eyes open - kicked in within a couple of hours. Duration was about 36 hours and then it just stopped as quickly as it had appeared.
 
Looks like there is now a real campaign to apply pressure to the unvaccinated in the US through the media. Just hope it works though I think there will always be a hardcore of the utterly deluded.

Trouble is these tend to be people who already hate their neighbors and society in general, and they view vaccines through that lens as something to make other people angry about by avoiding.
 
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Here’s a non-paywall link as ever the actual story is more complex than the headline.


Interesting quote from that article.
The researchers urged the government to take immediate measures to halt the current rise in cases, including greater enforcement of the indoor mask mandate, boosting vaccination rates and the return of the “Green Pass” system, which limits access to some venues and events to only those who have been vaccinated or who have recovered from the illness.
 
I think people think vaccine escape is achieved in one Big Bang. From what I’ve read it’s more like successive variants wear the vaccine resistance down that’s why you want to stop variants occurring.

I don't think that variants wear down resistance.

Vaccines don't really target a virus. They target a distinctive protein on the virus' shell--in this case the "spike" protein that lets the Covid virus breach the human cell. The vaccine contains (or, in the case of the new mRNA vaccines, manufactures) the target protein, which, when injected, provokes the body into creating antibodies that react to foreign proteins. Antibodies are like templates matched to the shape of the alien protein. They block these proteins and mark the virus for destruction by white blood cells. The body remembers how to make the antibodies after an infection. So you have protection for awhile, even for life.

But it is better than that. If something like 85 to 95% of a population has antibodies to a given virus, either because the individuals are vaccinated or have had the disease, that population has so-called herd immunity. Individuals susceptible to infection--those in the unprotected 5-15%--are isolated from other unprotected persons by the immune people around them. So the virus cannot jump to a new host. All else being equal, the virus will become extinct, like smallpox.

Unfortunately, viral proteins do not necessarily stay the same. The genetic material of viruses like Covid, colds, and influenza is prone to mistakes--mutations--during replication. So the more replications there are, the more variants there are. Each mistake/mutation makes it more likely that the target protein for a vaccine will change shape to the point where the antibodies generated by existing vaccines (or by previous infection) can no longer lock on to the target. This is why we get colds and the flu every year, even if we are immune to all the versions we've had in the past.

Needless to say, a large percentage of unvaccinated people--like the 30% resisters in the US and the millions that we have shortsightedly failed to vaccinate in Africa and Asia--makes rapid transmission, rapid viral replication, and new mutations much more likely than it would otherwise be. They create a "herd susceptibility" that greatly increases the probability that existing vaccines will lose effectiveness over time.

But loss of vaccine effectiveness may not be the only--or the worst--fallout from low vaccination rates: the unvaccinated may actually make the virus deadlier. Viruses replicate at a tremendous rate compared to, say, humans or elephants or trees. So natural selection acts on them in days and weeks rather than in millenia and eons. If uninfected hosts are few and far between or immune to a virus, then natural selection favors viral mutations that make the virus less virulent. Less virulent variants replicate less aggressively and make less virus, but their hosts live long enough for the virus to spread and reproduce in a new host. But if uninfected hosts are readily available and unvaccinated, natural selection favors the most virulent mutations, the ones that replicate most aggressively and turn as much of the host into new viruses as possible. The host dies quickly, but a new one is ready to hand. You then have a deadly, runaway epidemic that wipes out the unprotected, which may well include those whose vaccinations have been rendered obsolete by mutations to the target proteins.

This is why the fate of each of us is the fate of all of us in this situation. Refusing the vaccine or denying it to others, in Africa or elsewhere, endangers all of us.
 


 
Talking about the likely viral free for all once restrictions go and how maintaining some controls is the best way to mitigate especially with flu.

But there is this: We already know how to prevent those infections, or at least how to mitigate them. Much of the world kept them mostly at bay for more than a year through fairly simple actions. Keeping up with wearing masks, staying home when sick, and washing hands could make a difference in how the next viral season unfolds.

“All of these viruses will come back at some point—but if we still have some measures in place, they may come back in a more gradual way,” Mecassar says. “If we stop everything simultaneously, there’s a high chance that those pathogens could resurge with even more spread than would typically be seen.”

 
Another article about that study in Israel:
 
Another article about that study in Israel:
No wonder that British Doctor had to modify his comments as he was coming perilously close to implying the Israeli scientists didn’t know what they were doing.
 
I’ve tried to even out the political biases by using two articles on the same topic.


 
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