I am concerned about people being reinfected by some of the new strains of coronavirus

I am concerned about people being reinfected by some of the new strains of coronavirus

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We will never end this damn pandemic. Ever.

Today is Groundhog Day, right? Well, let me quote the viral prediction: “It will be cold, it will turn gray and it will last for the rest of your life”.

As I am stupid, it did not automatically occur to me that a mutant strain of the virus that is able to escape antibodies produced by a first generation version of a vaccine is also capable of escaping antibodies produced by a first generation version of the virus itself. If you were infected with the common coronavirus a few months ago and overcame it, there is no logical reason to be necessarily protected from infection by a new strain that has evolved enough that your body’s immune system no longer “recognizes” you. Which is exactly what is happening in South Africa, according to Fauci. People who had COVID 1.0 are receiving COVID 2.0 thanks to the variant that appeared there. Watch a few minutes here.

It is not just in South Africa that people are apparently being reinfected. Manaus, a city in Brazil, was devastated by COVID last year. The reward for enduring a ferocious outbreak is collective immunity among survivors – unless the virus mutates to the point of becoming a new pathogen again, in which case another ferocious outbreak is underway. This is what Manaus seems to be facing now:

Even in a year of horrible suffering, what is happening in Brazil stands out. In the city of Manaus, in the rainforest, where 2 million people live, bodies are being thrown into mass graves as fast as they can be excavated. Hospitals have run out of oxygen and people with potentially treatable cases of COVID-19 are dying of suffocation. This nature and scale of mortality has not been seen since the first months of the pandemic …

The data appeared to support the idea that herd immunity in Manaus was close. In this month’s Science, researchers mapped the virus acquisition last year: in April, blood tests found that 4.8 percent of the city’s population had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. In June, the number rose to 52.5%. Because infected people do not always test positive for antibodies, the researchers estimated that in June, about two-thirds of the city had been infected. In November, the estimate was around 76%. In The Lancet this week, a team of Brazilian researchers noted that, even if these estimates were wrong by a large margin, infection on this scale “should provide immunity to the important population to prevent a major outbreak”. In fact, it seemed so. The city has largely managed to reopen and remain open all winter with low levels of COVID-19 boxes.

Either scientists have strongly overestimated the portion of the population that gained immunity from the initial outbreak or the new Brazilian variant is burning people who have recovered from the common COVID. Best scenario for us: we may need booster vaccines several times a year, as new strains appear here or abroad and start to spread among the population, including among people who have had the disease before. (Moderna is already developing a reinforcement for the South African variant and Pfizer is “preparing the ground” to do so if its current vaccine ends up fighting this strain.) Worst case scenario: a super-contagious strain appears and begins to America spread at the speed of light as the pharmaceutical industry struggles to develop a booster and distribute it, leaving us back to square one in collective immunity.

We may not need a “permanent” vaccine infrastructure to do this, but a short-term mobilization after which everything is back to normal by September looks more and more like an illusion.

In fact, the Times reports today that the highly contagious British strain of the virus may be evolving to resist current vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna recently reported that they believe their products are just as effective against the current British variant as they are against ordinary COVID. But what about the “new” British variant?

Scientists suspect that B.1.351 [South African] the partial escape of the vaccine variant is largely thanks to a single mutation, called E484K. Experiments indicate that the E484K mutation makes it more difficult for antibodies to cling to the virus and prevent it from entering cells.

Now, it has been found that some coronaviruses B.1.1.7 in Britain also have the E484K mutation…

[I]in a report published online on Tuesday, Rajiv Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues reported on an experiment they conducted to address exactly that issue. They combined the E484K mutation with other key mutations found in variant B.1.1.7, the one initially found in Britain. The addition of the E484K mutation made it difficult for antibodies to block viruses. The researchers wrote that “they observed a significant loss of neutralizing activity”.

If you liked the British super corona, you will love the British super corona. See now why Fauci and the CDC are encouraging people to wear double masks? It is not because Fauci is a killjoy that does not rest until we are all walking in lunar suits. It is because foreign strains are already circulating here and it seems unlikely that we will have a significant number of people vaccinated before they cause much damage. If the super-corona spreads more easily than the corona, the obvious thing to do is to add extra filtration to the airways to try to avoid inhalation.

I’ll leave you with a hopeful note from former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb, who thinks that SARS-CoV-2 mutates slowly enough that we can stay ahead of him with an aggressive vaccination regimen. It is important to note that, although South African and Brazilian strains seem capable of reinfecting people, the jury has not yet decided whether they are more contagious than ordinary COVID. The British variant appears to have this advantage because it quickly became the dominant strain in the United Kingdom, but the other harmful strains may not spread as quickly. They are a little more difficult to be tackled by common antibodies. Exit question: Why is it supposed to take the FDA “weeks” to decide whether Moderna can fill its vaccine bottles with 15 doses instead of 10, as it wants to do? This represents a 50% increase in production instantly. And time is of the essence.

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