Re: "freedom day" : Thu Jul 08, 2021 1:12 pm  

Zoo Zoo Boom wrote:

You need to put things into context - my point was about student life and yes they should have been allowed to pass it around amongst themselves. Lectures were all on line so unless it passes down a telephone line not much chance of a lecturer getting it from a student. How many students got seriously ill or died - miniscule amounts compared to those infected. Education is hugely important in any civilised society it is how it progresses - stopping it is a disaster.

There will always be new strains - so do we lockdown hard indefinitely just in case? Australia has one of the strictest border controls in the world yet they have still managed to get the Delhi Belly version.

So your view is what - we sacrifice hospitality and travel for what exactly - the vaccination program was never intended to break the link it was always intended to lessen the impact when you catch it which it quite clearly does.

People die of Flu in significant quantities every year but we don't close everything down and force masks on everyone.- people die do we stop society behaving normally because 1,500 people a day die - it is a very sad but its the reality.

We have to learn to live with this virus as we have others - Spanish Flu/Smallpox etc. or would you rather we well kids not going to school, fit people not going to work - where does this all end?

Again, another post, straight form Troy central office.

I haven't seen anyone advocating a "hard" lockdown indefinitely, certainly not something that I've advocated.

What we've seen this week is a decision to abandon all efforts to reduce the spread of the virus - a full 360 degree turn on the efforts of the last 15 months or so - and a move toward trying to establish herd immunity among the young (under 18's), although, interestingly, this isn't quite how Bojo "sold" the message to the public.
A more sensible approach would have been to continue with the gradual unlocking, which, ironically, had been Tory policy until Monday of this week.
As I said previously, to be "happy" with 100,000 new cases every day and now, with quarantine abandoned for those with 2 jabs, returning from "amber" destinations, just looks reckless.
They seem to have forgotten about how easily we imputed the Indian variant, which was the start of the current trend in rising cases and if/ when a variant arrives which circumvents the vaccine, we will be royally screwed.
Maybe we are seeing the influence of the new Health Minister or, maybe they have just thought "feck it", who knows.
To abandon all control is a unique way to "fight" such a deadly virus.

Re: "freedom day" : Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:12 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

if/ when a variant arrives which circumvents the vaccine, we will be royally screwed.
.

Thankfully that's highly unlikely. The vaccines generate an immune response to the critical part of the virus used for cell invasion. It can only change so much before it becomes unable to invade the cell. In all probability mutations that completely avoid the vaccine induced immune response (if that's even possible) would not be able to replicate via cell invasion and immediately disappear.
We've made a lot of variants of the spike protein - around 45 so far - we can see how little there is left to potentially change. Mutations need to not effect the 3D structure of the protein to the point where it becomes unstable.

I agree with the rest of your post though. The death rate amongst young people is low but it's not zero. The difference between Covid and flu is that we have highly effective vaccines against covid, we don't currently against flu. In essence by not waiting until all over 18's are vaccinated (just a few short weeks) and allowing infections to spread rapidly, people will die who have no need to die.

[Durham Giant]

Re: "freedom day" : Fri Jul 09, 2021 7:47 am  

DHM wrote: Thankfully that's highly unlikely. The vaccines generate an immune response to the critical part of the virus used for cell invasion. It can only change so much before it becomes unable to invade the cell. In all probability mutations that completely avoid the vaccine induced immune response (if that's even possible) would not be able to replicate via cell invasion and immediately disappear. We've made a lot of variants of the spike protein - around 45 so far - we can see how little there is left to potentially change. Mutations need to not effect the 3D structure of the protein to the point where it becomes unstable. I agree with the rest of your post though. The death rate amongst young people is low but it's not zero. The difference between Covid and flu is that we have highly effective vaccines against covid, we don't currently against flu. In essence by not waiting until all over 18's are vaccinated (just a few short weeks) and allowing infections to spread rapidly, people will die who have no need to die. Current research on the LAMBDA variant suggests that you are wrong . That variant is already in this country. Fortunately it seems to not be able to bypass Pfizer and Moderna vaccines But allowing pretty much unfettered holiday travel will certainly add to the scientific experiment currently ongoing. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21259673v1 As for your comments about flu that is because there are hindered of mutations of flu which keep changing and you never know which one will be the winter “flu”. Current flu vaccines are based on providing a response to the 3 main circulating types of flu. Pretty much guess work. coronavirus is likely to develop in the same way . In 18 months we have had a dozen varieties of Covid, delta, South African, Indian, Lambda , Kent whatever you like to call them. In 10 years time we may have hundreds just like the flu with the country having to guess which updated vaccine to give in the winter along with the flu vaccine. My big issue with the complete withdrawal of all management of Covid such as masks etc is that all experts agree we will have a massive flu season as people have lost natural immunity to various viruses ( hence the recent increase in children admitted to hospital with respiratory viruses). Maintaining some basic elements of virus protection such as masks in public places . Public transport etc would also have reduced the spread of flu this winter. Being able to turn around and say we have 50,000 flu deaths but it is nothing to do with Covid spread and attempts to manage it will be nothing short of disingenuous.

DHM wrote: Thankfully that's highly unlikely. The vaccines generate an immune response to the critical part of the virus used for cell invasion. It can only change so much before it becomes unable to invade the cell. In all probability mutations that completely avoid the vaccine induced immune response (if that's even possible) would not be able to replicate via cell invasion and immediately disappear. We've made a lot of variants of the spike protein - around 45 so far - we can see how little there is left to potentially change. Mutations need to not effect the 3D structure of the protein to the point where it becomes unstable. I agree with the rest of your post though. The death rate amongst young people is low but it's not zero. The difference between Covid and flu is that we have highly effective vaccines against covid, we don't currently against flu. In essence by not waiting until all over 18's are vaccinated (just a few short weeks) and allowing infections to spread rapidly, people will die who have no need to die. Current research on the LAMBDA variant suggests that you are wrong . That variant is already in this country. Fortunately it seems to not be able to bypass Pfizer and Moderna vaccines But allowing pretty much unfettered holiday travel will certainly add to the scientific experiment currently ongoing. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21259673v1 As for your comments about flu that is because there are hindered of mutations of flu which keep changing and you never know which one will be the winter “flu”. Current flu vaccines are based on providing a response to the 3 main circulating types of flu. Pretty much guess work. coronavirus is likely to develop in the same way . In 18 months we have had a dozen varieties of Covid, delta, South African, Indian, Lambda , Kent whatever you like to call them. In 10 years time we may have hundreds just like the flu with the country having to guess which updated vaccine to give in the winter along with the flu vaccine. My big issue with the complete withdrawal of all management of Covid such as masks etc is that all experts agree we will have a massive flu season as people have lost natural immunity to various viruses ( hence the recent increase in children admitted to hospital with respiratory viruses). Maintaining some basic elements of virus protection such as masks in public places . Public transport etc would also have reduced the spread of flu this winter. Being able to turn around and say we have 50,000 flu deaths but it is nothing to do with Covid spread and attempts to manage it will be nothing short of disingenuous.

Re: "freedom day" : Fri Jul 09, 2021 8:20 am  

wrencat1873 wrote:

Again, another post, straight form Troy central office.

I haven't seen anyone advocating a "hard" lockdown indefinitely, certainly not something that I've advocated.

What we've seen this week is a decision to abandon all efforts to reduce the spread of the virus - a full 360 degree turn on the efforts of the last 15 months or so - and a move toward trying to establish herd immunity among the young (under 18's), although, interestingly, this isn't quite how Bojo "sold" the message to the public.
A more sensible approach would have been to continue with the gradual unlocking, which, ironically, had been Tory policy until Monday of this week.
As I said previously, to be "happy" with 100,000 new cases every day and now, with quarantine abandoned for those with 2 jabs, returning from "amber" destinations, just looks reckless.
They seem to have forgotten about how easily we imputed the Indian variant, which was the start of the current trend in rising cases and if/ when a variant arrives which circumvents the vaccine, we will be royally screwed.
Maybe we are seeing the influence of the new Health Minister or, maybe they have just thought "feck it", who knows.
To abandon all control is a unique way to "fight" such a deadly virus.

I would agree with you if masks were conclusively proved to work - there is no evidence that they actually do - if they do its marginal. How do you fully open up hospitality/sports if mask wearing is required?

Vaccination is the only way out of this - social distancing is impossible to administer on a long term basis - and masks provide minimal protection.

I think there are a lot of people who have had a very nice experience since the pandemic started - scientist have seen their profile rise significantly - people working from home etc. that don't want the current state of affairs to change. A recent poll suggest a significant % wanted closure of nightclubs, 10pm curfew and 10 days quarantine after foreign travel to remain in place for ever - why are people so scared?

The NHS virtually stopped treating any other patients so we now have a backlog of 5m people - eventually this will cause far more heartache than COVID ever has - we need some perspective about what our priorities are?

Re: "freedom day" : Fri Jul 09, 2021 9:58 am  

Durham Giant wrote: Current research on the LAMBDA variant suggests that you are wrong . That variant is already in this country. Fortunately it seems to not be able to bypass Pfizer and Moderna vaccines But allowing pretty much unfettered holiday travel will certainly add to the scientific experiment currently ongoing. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21259673v1 No it doesn't. The exact opposite in fact. Lambda variant does not completely evade vaccine protection - and this is the Chinese de-activated live virus vaccine. By the way, I didn't say it was impossible, I said it was "highly unlikely". If you really want to look at this paper in detail they perform no serology - partly because they didn't have access to the Lambda antigen test, they use a pseudo viral neutralisation assay which shows only one part of the immune response, and that response is reduced but not eliminated. It's not a complete picture. You see the same pattern with the delta and the UK variant and that's because the vaccines had the wild type virus as the model. The Lambda variant is the C37 lineage and we make it and supply serology assays for it as a variant of concern. the guys who produced this paper didn't have it. I would also add that there is complex immune response generated by the vaccines, including T-Cell. The vaccines even seem to generate and immune response to parts of the virus not part of the vaccine itself, and it's not clear why. I also didn't say we should have unfettered international travel. I didn't mention travel at all. As for flu, I am acutely aware of how flu mutates, I have worked with vaccine manufacturers to improve their serology and vaccine quantification assays. The group I recently worked with at Oxford are very close to a universal flu vaccine - one shot for life. There are other groups also getting to this point.

Durham Giant wrote: Current research on the LAMBDA variant suggests that you are wrong . That variant is already in this country. Fortunately it seems to not be able to bypass Pfizer and Moderna vaccines But allowing pretty much unfettered holiday travel will certainly add to the scientific experiment currently ongoing. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21259673v1 No it doesn't. The exact opposite in fact. Lambda variant does not completely evade vaccine protection - and this is the Chinese de-activated live virus vaccine. By the way, I didn't say it was impossible, I said it was "highly unlikely". If you really want to look at this paper in detail they perform no serology - partly because they didn't have access to the Lambda antigen test, they use a pseudo viral neutralisation assay which shows only one part of the immune response, and that response is reduced but not eliminated. It's not a complete picture. You see the same pattern with the delta and the UK variant and that's because the vaccines had the wild type virus as the model. The Lambda variant is the C37 lineage and we make it and supply serology assays for it as a variant of concern. the guys who produced this paper didn't have it. I would also add that there is complex immune response generated by the vaccines, including T-Cell. The vaccines even seem to generate and immune response to parts of the virus not part of the vaccine itself, and it's not clear why. I also didn't say we should have unfettered international travel. I didn't mention travel at all. As for flu, I am acutely aware of how flu mutates, I have worked with vaccine manufacturers to improve their serology and vaccine quantification assays. The group I recently worked with at Oxford are very close to a universal flu vaccine - one shot for life. There are other groups also getting to this point.

Re: "freedom day" : Sat Jul 10, 2021 11:40 am  

DHM wrote:

Thankfully that's highly unlikely. The vaccines generate an immune response to the critical part of the virus used for cell invasion. It can only change so much before it becomes unable to invade the cell. In all probability mutations that completely avoid the vaccine induced immune response (if that's even possible) would not be able to replicate via cell invasion and immediately disappear.
We've made a lot of variants of the spike protein - around 45 so far - we can see how little there is left to potentially change. Mutations need to not effect the 3D structure of the protein to the point where it becomes unstable.

I agree with the rest of your post though. The death rate amongst young people is low but it's not zero. The difference between Covid and flu is that we have highly effective vaccines against covid, we don't currently against flu. In essence by not waiting until all over 18's are vaccinated (just a few short weeks) and allowing infections to spread rapidly, people will die who have no need to die.

It's going to be an "interesting" few months and it would be more interesting to know just how many people who have had 0ne or two doses of the vaccine are still contracting covid.
I realise this may have a negative effect on the vaccine program and that it's probably more important to ensure that the take up of the vaccine is as high as possible but, there are plenty of double jabbed people contracting the virus and whilst I will happily bow to your knowledge on vaccines, what would be the effect of any new variant(s), especially when we have a significant increase in overseas travel on the way.

Re: "freedom day" : Sat Jul 10, 2021 1:56 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

It's going to be an "interesting" few months and it would be more interesting to know just how many people who have had 0ne or two doses of the vaccine are still contracting covid.
I realise this may have a negative effect on the vaccine program and that it's probably more important to ensure that the take up of the vaccine is as high as possible but, there are plenty of double jabbed people contracting the virus and whilst I will happily bow to your knowledge on vaccines, what would be the effect of any new variant(s), especially when we have a significant increase in overseas travel on the way.

It's called Vaccine Breakthrough, PHE are doing the study and they will use our technology platform to do a lot of it. I work with them, I can't discuss details but they are planning comprehensive work. If it is reassuring at all vaccine breakthrough to do with the individuals response to the vaccine rather than variants. They will also do reinfection studies.
We (my company) have made around 60 variants of covid, including several strains of the delta and the C37 etc. We use a standard sample in all our tests that's calibrated to the WHO reference material, it's a pool of several covid positive convalescent individuals, it's from early last year so the infection was wild type (Wuhan strain). All the variants we test show massive antibody binding from that sample and ACE2 inhibition - direct inhibition of ACE2 binding to the viral protein. What that means is that all the variants so far (as I said we have made around 60), are still identified and strongly bound by antibodies from Wuhan strain infected individuals.

I want to be reassuring because we are in a really good place with the vaccines, they are highly effective against all forms of the virus so far and the people at the sharp end of this are all pretty confident that no mutation will appear that completely sidesteps the massive immune response the vaccines generate. I'm not being political, just factual. Booster shots are looking highly effective as well.

Re: "freedom day" : Sat Jul 10, 2021 1:59 pm  

As far as I know, the primary purpose of a vaccine is to minimise the chances of long term damage and death of a person from the virus, which all these covid vaccines do at a very effective rate.

Re: "freedom day" : Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:49 pm  

DHM wrote:

It's called Vaccine Breakthrough, PHE are doing the study and they will use our technology platform to do a lot of it. I work with them, I can't discuss details but they are planning comprehensive work. If it is reassuring at all vaccine breakthrough to do with the individuals response to the vaccine rather than variants. They will also do reinfection studies.
We (my company) have made around 60 variants of covid, including several strains of the delta and the C37 etc. We use a standard sample in all our tests that's calibrated to the WHO reference material, it's a pool of several covid positive convalescent individuals, it's from early last year so the infection was wild type (Wuhan strain). All the variants we test show massive antibody binding from that sample and ACE2 inhibition - direct inhibition of ACE2 binding to the viral protein. What that means is that all the variants so far (as I said we have made around 60), are still identified and strongly bound by antibodies from Wuhan strain infected individuals.

I want to be reassuring because we are in a really good place with the vaccines, they are highly effective against all forms of the virus so far and the people at the sharp end of this are all pretty confident that no mutation will appear that completely sidesteps the massive immune response the vaccines generate. I'm not being political, just factual. Booster shots are looking highly effective as well.

Excellent posting.

Re: "freedom day" : Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:39 am  

DHM wrote:

It's called Vaccine Breakthrough, PHE are doing the study and they will use our technology platform to do a lot of it. I work with them, I can't discuss details but they are planning comprehensive work. If it is reassuring at all vaccine breakthrough to do with the individuals response to the vaccine rather than variants. They will also do reinfection studies.
We (my company) have made around 60 variants of covid, including several strains of the delta and the C37 etc. We use a standard sample in all our tests that's calibrated to the WHO reference material, it's a pool of several covid positive convalescent individuals, it's from early last year so the infection was wild type (Wuhan strain). All the variants we test show massive antibody binding from that sample and ACE2 inhibition - direct inhibition of ACE2 binding to the viral protein. What that means is that all the variants so far (as I said we have made around 60), are still identified and strongly bound by antibodies from Wuhan strain infected individuals.

I want to be reassuring because we are in a really good place with the vaccines, they are highly effective against all forms of the virus so far and the people at the sharp end of this are all pretty confident that no mutation will appear that completely sidesteps the massive immune response the vaccines generate. I'm not being political, just factual. Booster shots are looking highly effective as well.

Great explanation, thank you.