Slack / Private Message Drop — page 823

[2021-05-17 06:05:18] [Robert Garry] Too soon to declare victory and yes a variety of other factors could be at play but the curve is coming down in the US. Other "high-vax" counties it seems to be similar. Still less than half with even a partial vaccine course. You can add in the previously infected (symptomatic or not) plus some measure of protection from seasonal cov infections, but those are guesses. Questions - 1. safe to saw the decreases are vaccine related or not? 2. If so what threshold level of immunization (based in Isreal, UK and UK) makes a dent in new cases? 3. What's the likelihood that variants and other factors make the downturn a temporary illusion if as seems likely vaccine coverge peters out and we hit maybe not too far north of 50%. [shared file(s): image.png] [2021-05-17 06:10:20] [Andrew Rambaut] We have been in a pretty strong lockdown over the entire vaccination period so decline in cases probably not down to vaccine (much improved death rate of course). The question is what happens next? [2021-05-17 06:57:12] [Robert Garry] What happens next is indeed the big question - meanwhile, following the invasion of the nonAustralian marsupial this reptilian creature appeared on my dashboard during the drive in. [shared file(s): IMG_1712.JPG] [2021-05-17 06:57:40] [Kristian Andersen] .... the virus mutates, causing further waves. Unless we get many more people vaccinated and updates boosters. [2021-05-17 07:08:12] [Robert Garry] Agreed - I don't think the US is going to get to sufficient coverage to drive the virus to low-low-no. Most Republicans will not get the vax. No way that sufficient vaccination happens elsewhere it's needed in the world (eg. South America, Southern Africa) so always a source of new variants. Don't think SC2 is going to run out of mutational space anytime soon [we're just seeing the path of least resistance repeated seemingly a couple of times]. Best case scenario in the US is a slow burn with spikes. As Eddie implied HKU1 and OC43 are probably best look forward to what SC2 has in store. OC43 for one has been exploring a lot of it's mutational space over decades. [2021-05-17 07:13:10] [Robert Garry] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/663 [2021-05-17 07:17:56] [Kristian Andersen] Yup, we'll see relief in the short term and vaccination can definitely be the end game - however, only if we think about this as being a global problem and not a national one. [2021-05-17 07:18:09] [Kristian Andersen] This is pretty key: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009509 [2021-05-17 07:24:37] [Kristian Andersen] I also think we're seeing _some_ evidence for post vaccination infections in clusters - i.e., super spreading. Why? Because vaccine 'failures' may very likely not be down to the individual (didn't respond to the vaccine, insufficient immunity, etc.), but rather down to epidemiology. As a vaccinated person, spend a lot of time with an unvaccinated infected person and you'll likely get COVID - the risk is obviously much less, but I'm not convinced our 95% effectiveness will hold up in a world of many unvaccinated people, variants, COVID still circulating, and, most importantly, social interactions back to near-normal.