Drareg
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- Joined
- Feb 18, 2016
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- 4,772
I’m sure many of you were made aware of this, the question is what does it mean for vaccines under development that we tax payer have paid billions for? Professor David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia gives his opinion here- Lockdown Sceptics – Stay Sceptical. Control the Hysteria. Save Lives. it’s about 3 articles down.
It not just Denmark where the mink are effected, it’s happening elsewhere now.
The vaccines in development target a specific spike protein which may render it redundant against this new strain.
It seems Tcells are still the most effective strategy and yet here we are still entering lockdowns for covid19 and it’s already mutating, are we going do this strategy forever? Wait for vaccines for every virus that mutates, I mean big pharma would love this along with the ruling class authoritarians, rolling lockdowns, you know well their will be idiots in the covid cult who will go along with this.
Considering our response thus far to covid19 I expect the covid-mink 20 will be more of the same, any strategy that allows for more authoritarianism will be the path forward, in the name of public health of course.
"This is important because practically all the vaccines in development, including the front-running Moderna, Pfizer, AZ and J&J candidates are directed against this Spike protein. Rare exceptions are a few whole-killed-virus vaccines being investigated in China and India.
The response to natural COVID-19 infection, including the more persistent T-cell response, on the other hand, is not purely directed against the Spike protein but also gives reactivity against other components, specifically the Nucleoprotein"
A fortnight ago I had a deal of flak, in media interviews, from those who said herd immunity wouldn’t work after an Imperial study reported circulating antibody levels dwindled over time. There were good arguments against that assertion at the time – that it’s what you expect circulating immunoglobulins to do post infection, that the T-cell response remained, and that the ‘immune memory’ persisted, enabling manufacture of more antibodies under challenge.
Harder to refute was the argument that the awaited vaccine would give a stronger immune response than natural infection, as shown in Phase I trials.
The mink results weaken this argument considerably. A weaker broad-based response from natural infection may be more protective than a strong response specifically to the Spike protein if virus with an altered Spike enters wide circulation.
With travel restrictions and mink culls, there clearly is a massive effort to stop this from happening. This effort may succeed or fail. What is however revealed is that the Spike protein is prone to consequential change. And if it has happened once, my experience (from a lifetime of working on antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which are far less mutable than RNA viruses) is that it’ll happen again, likely without mink as a vector.
I got back to Prof Livermore and asked him to clarify something for me. Why does the existence of this new mink strain, and the possibility of other mutations arising from human interaction with other species, invalidate the suppress-until-a-vaccine-is-available strategy but not the GDB strategy? The SSI press release he quotes suggests that antibodies in humans who’ve been infected with SARS-CoV-2 don’t provide much protection from the new strain. Yet Prof Livermore says the body’s response to natural COVID-19 infection would provide better all-round protection than a vaccine specifically designed to immunise people against the Spike protein. How does he reconcile those two things? He replied:
Anything that changes the virus so that it evades some component of the immune system isn’t good news. However:
Vaccines – almost all, except some Chinese & Indian candidates, seek to elicit a response solely to the Spike protein. If that target changes, as in the mink variant, they have a problem. They aren’t hitting anything else.
Natural infection, as will occur if following a GBD strategy – gives a range of differently-targeted antibodies and T-cells. Some recognise the Spike protein and some the nucleoprotein or membrane proteins. Those with other targets rather than the Spike protein will remain fully active against the mutant virus. Loss of the Spike as a target will, very likely, weaken the overall response but, unlike with the vaccine, some protection remains from antibodies and T-cells that target non-Spike components.
Only clinical experience will finally clarify the picture but this does argue that broader, infection-induced responses have a better chance of protecting against virus variants than an Spike-protein targeted vaccine. The SSI press release doesn’t give us enough information on just how the testing was done, and whether they were looking at total response or specifically at Spike-targeted antibodies. They certainly didn’t look at T-cell-mediated immunity.
It not just Denmark where the mink are effected, it’s happening elsewhere now.
The vaccines in development target a specific spike protein which may render it redundant against this new strain.
It seems Tcells are still the most effective strategy and yet here we are still entering lockdowns for covid19 and it’s already mutating, are we going do this strategy forever? Wait for vaccines for every virus that mutates, I mean big pharma would love this along with the ruling class authoritarians, rolling lockdowns, you know well their will be idiots in the covid cult who will go along with this.
Considering our response thus far to covid19 I expect the covid-mink 20 will be more of the same, any strategy that allows for more authoritarianism will be the path forward, in the name of public health of course.
"This is important because practically all the vaccines in development, including the front-running Moderna, Pfizer, AZ and J&J candidates are directed against this Spike protein. Rare exceptions are a few whole-killed-virus vaccines being investigated in China and India.
The response to natural COVID-19 infection, including the more persistent T-cell response, on the other hand, is not purely directed against the Spike protein but also gives reactivity against other components, specifically the Nucleoprotein"
A fortnight ago I had a deal of flak, in media interviews, from those who said herd immunity wouldn’t work after an Imperial study reported circulating antibody levels dwindled over time. There were good arguments against that assertion at the time – that it’s what you expect circulating immunoglobulins to do post infection, that the T-cell response remained, and that the ‘immune memory’ persisted, enabling manufacture of more antibodies under challenge.
Harder to refute was the argument that the awaited vaccine would give a stronger immune response than natural infection, as shown in Phase I trials.
The mink results weaken this argument considerably. A weaker broad-based response from natural infection may be more protective than a strong response specifically to the Spike protein if virus with an altered Spike enters wide circulation.
With travel restrictions and mink culls, there clearly is a massive effort to stop this from happening. This effort may succeed or fail. What is however revealed is that the Spike protein is prone to consequential change. And if it has happened once, my experience (from a lifetime of working on antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which are far less mutable than RNA viruses) is that it’ll happen again, likely without mink as a vector.
I got back to Prof Livermore and asked him to clarify something for me. Why does the existence of this new mink strain, and the possibility of other mutations arising from human interaction with other species, invalidate the suppress-until-a-vaccine-is-available strategy but not the GDB strategy? The SSI press release he quotes suggests that antibodies in humans who’ve been infected with SARS-CoV-2 don’t provide much protection from the new strain. Yet Prof Livermore says the body’s response to natural COVID-19 infection would provide better all-round protection than a vaccine specifically designed to immunise people against the Spike protein. How does he reconcile those two things? He replied:
Anything that changes the virus so that it evades some component of the immune system isn’t good news. However:
Vaccines – almost all, except some Chinese & Indian candidates, seek to elicit a response solely to the Spike protein. If that target changes, as in the mink variant, they have a problem. They aren’t hitting anything else.
Natural infection, as will occur if following a GBD strategy – gives a range of differently-targeted antibodies and T-cells. Some recognise the Spike protein and some the nucleoprotein or membrane proteins. Those with other targets rather than the Spike protein will remain fully active against the mutant virus. Loss of the Spike as a target will, very likely, weaken the overall response but, unlike with the vaccine, some protection remains from antibodies and T-cells that target non-Spike components.
Only clinical experience will finally clarify the picture but this does argue that broader, infection-induced responses have a better chance of protecting against virus variants than an Spike-protein targeted vaccine. The SSI press release doesn’t give us enough information on just how the testing was done, and whether they were looking at total response or specifically at Spike-targeted antibodies. They certainly didn’t look at T-cell-mediated immunity.
