Nobody knows.
This is a very interesting article. It discusses, among other things, how Delta variant infection plummeted in India and perhaps the UK after appearing to threaten wide swaths of their populations:
- In India — where the Delta variant was first identified and caused a huge outbreak — cases have plunged over the past two months. A similar drop may now be underway in Britain. There is no clear explanation for these declines.
It talks about a similar mysterious let up of Alpha variant cases in the Midwest this spring:
- In March and April, the Alpha variant helped cause a sharp rise in cases in the upper Midwest and Canada. That outbreak seemed poised to spread to the rest of North America — but did not.
And it has tidbits to titillate anti-vaxxers:
- In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes.
I think I’m fairly well-informed about COVID for a layperson. I read a lot about it and learn a lot here. But I wasn’t even aware of some of this stuff. I recommend a read if you can.
There could be a number of possible explanations for the sudden drop. Even if there was no reported change in attitudes, surges had likely already done their damage. Another possibility is that the virus had already infected a much larger number of people who either had cold-like symptoms and didn’t report them or perhaps even no symptoms at all.
Dr Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, has been saying for the last few weeks that there are a LOT of unreported cases associated with this variant and that we might see a similar drop here in a matter of weeks.
Good article. Some people correlate every up or down movement to human behavior. Not true.
Ben Wakana, the White House Deputy Director of Strategic Communications & Engagement, appears to be pretty upset with how some of the media is communicating the latest CDC data/guidance:
Well, as someone who voted for Biden, it’s not the news media that’s wrong – it’s Ben Wakana, the CDC, and the Biden administration. The data clearly show that the claim in the last tweet you linked is outrageously wrong. I understand that they’re afraid that ‘alarmism’ is going to communicate that the vaccines don’t matter, but reports have clearly stated that while transmission protection is down, protection against severe disease remains strong. It’s the Biden administration and the CDC that are really risking their credibility here and they really ought to walk this back.
The messaging from the CDC has been terrible. They need to understand that they aren’t talking to fellow scientists. I understand their qualifications and maybes in their statements but the general public largely hears: 1) You must get vaccinated or you will get Covid and die, and also 2) Even if you get vaccinated, you can spread Covid, get Covid and die.
People start throwing their hands up and wondering why they need to get vaccinated. There are breakthrough infections with any vaccination. Vaccinated people still get the measles. To harp of the possibility of breakthrough infections needlessly inflate the worry in the public about them.
This is quite poignant.
Betty Antoine’s 46-year-old son Brandon became a COVID statistic—despite her pleading with him to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
"I begged him, I said, ‘You need to take the vaccine, Brandon.’ ‘Oh, no, mom, I’m not going to take it. And you better not take the vaccine either,’ Antoine recalled in a conversation with CBS News’ David Begnaud.
“Did he ever talk to his doctor?” Begnaud asked.
“His doctor wanted him to take the vaccine. He told her no,” Betty said.
He told his mom and his friends he had done the research and wanted to wait, but Antoine said her son left out an important detail to his friends.
“He did not tell his friends all the underlying health conditions he had. He had a bad heart. He had lung problems, COPD,” she said. Brandon tested for COVID-19 and died six later. Standing next to his bedside, Antoine said she was overcome with a sense of purpose.
“First of all, I was so full with… I want to say angry. I was kind of angry, not so much at him, but because he did not take the vaccine,” she said. “And I said, right then I’m going to ask his friends and everybody to take that vaccine in honor of him.”
Antoine offered COVID-19 vaccines during his funeral. Three people stepped up that day to take the vaccine and 10 others followed later.
“I just wanted them to see Brandon’s ashes. I wanted them to know, look, Brandon is dead because he did not take the vaccine,” she said.
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I think they’ve essentially said your first and second points. I don’t see the CDC harping on the possibility of breakthrough infections - if anything, I think they’ve gone too far to avoid being viewed as ‘alarmist.’
Scientific question: if/when there is a strain that resists or evades current vaccines entirely, by what mechanism are they likely to do so? Would research on a vaccine specifically for that strain have to start at square one, or would it be just a matter of adjusting the current ones?
Someone on Twitter made an interesting point today that I hadn’t considered. In these stories about breakthrough cases, like “all members of family X” or the Cambridge cases, they never actually tell you which vaccine the vaccinated people took. If it’s the J&J that’d be fairly relevant to know given we already knew it was less effective against some variants. That person, and me too now, would like to know if anyone is capturing that info about these breakthrough cases.
I suspect that breakthrough infections have less to do with which vaccine was taken and more to do with time spent in and around infected persons. If you’re vaccinated and you happen to walk past someone who’s spreading virus but don’t otherwise have much contact with virus, there’s probably a good chance you’ll either not get infected or have a very light case. In a lot of the breakthrough cases I’ve seen (and this is admittedly just anecdotes), it seems that there’s contact over an extended period of time. Case in point: the SF area hospitals: repeated and prolonged exposure. The Oregon family that got sick: repeated prolonged exposure over 10 days. The Indian wedding in Houston: probably prolonged exposure over several days.
There is absolutely a lot of pressure on the vaccine regime right now – that’s the bad news. And the delta variant is breaking down the vaccine efficacy in terms of transmission. Still, it’s mostly keeping us out of the hospital until we can develop boosters.
Viruses can either evade detection by changing their spike proteins or they can replicate so much that they become highly transmissible and also overwhelm the immune system through intense replication.
I know very little about the immune system, but apparently part of the problem with the Delta strain is that it replicates faster than the immune system responds, so, (unless you have a very recent immunization), you have an infection/transmission window.
That would be addressed by having frequent immunizations, or a different (non-human) immune system.
It replicates itself and overwhelms the antibody response. The difference is that those who’ve been vaccinated still have a good virus killer response. Those who are unvaccinated have a delayed response, which leads to COVID pneumonia and a cytokine storm. As a result, there’s poor oxygenation, and poor oxygenation leads to multiple organ failure (shock). You’re dead meat at that point.
From what I’ve been reading, it’s at that point that some of the poor bastards finally become believers and start begging for the vaccine.
My understanding is that part of the problem is that (vaccinated or not) initially it’s replication is faster than the immune response. Then (vaccinated or not), there is an immune response, leading (in almost all cases) to recovery, but allowing a window with high transmission. Since this allows continued transmission and re-infection, it can be said to ‘evade’ current vaccines, in the sense that it will continue to be a problem and won’t go away.
Possiblilities:
- The theory is wrong.
- The theory is right, but not important enough to matter in the long run.
- The theory is right, but suppression is possible with frequent re-challenges by frequent booster vaccination.
Almost correct: the difference is that because the initial infection produces such a high viral load quickly, it overwhelms the immune system. If you have a healthy immune system (i.e. a young buck or bambi with no underlying conditions), you might feel like shit for a few days but your immune system will catch up to the virus without overreacting. But the more ‘defects’ your immunity has, the more delayed the response, the more likely your immune system is likely to fail you.
The analogy I sometimes use is this: your antibodies are like sentinels, gate guards, or watch tower guards. Their job is to be the first line of defense. They will tell the armed soldiers if there’s an advancing army. A healthy immune system gets attacked and notifies the soldiers to get ready, and then the soldiers attack the invaders.
But if your immune system is down or otherwise not prepared for the assault, then what happens is that your soldiers (t-cells) are confronted with an ambush, a surprise attack. Because there are so many viral particles attacking the immune system, the soldiers fly into action, but they’re not prepared to do their job. Think of it like an army that gets attacked in the middle of the night - shocked, surprised, scared, they pick up their assault rifles and start firing at anything that moves, including each other.
That’s what happens with an immune response that goes haywire: the immune system starts attacking itself. It starts shooting its own soldiers.
This is cool –puro San Antonio!
To encourage residents to get vaccinated, artist Gerardo Garcia illustrates his powerful and tattooed mother-in-law as she flexes her vaccinated arm in a city mural campaign.
Artist Kim Bishop depicts her masked 81-year-old mother surrounded by a frame of roses.
And artist James “Supa” Medrano portrays “brighter days” ahead with a maskless family under blue skies.
Their renderings are among six murals unveiled last month in the “What Will It Take” campaign — a collaboration between the city and arts nonprofit SMART to help boost vaccination rates among eligible people and highlight the talented arts community.
The murals adorn walls of grocery stores, bodegas and other places in neighborhoods heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These areas were those hardest hit by the pandemic, so when we were talking about doing a vaccine campaign, we wanted to spread a message of hope and commitment to helping these areas,” city spokeswoman Laura Mayes said.
…Inspired by his 23 years as a tattoo artist, Garcia presented [his mother-in-law Eulalia] Avila, 64, with a flowing ribbon around her and a tattooed arm with a bandage to signify her COVID-19 vaccine. Also depicted are her two dogs, who Garcia said are her “companions in life.”
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I mentioned earlier that a fully vaccinated coworker and her whole family had Covid. I got a detail wrong – her husband, also fully vaccinated, has not gotten Covid. So the fully vaxxed coworker and her two young kids got it, fully vaxxed husband did not.
My coworker initially had essentially flu-like symptoms. Very unpleasant, but not severe. Today she mentioned that she has lost her sense of smell and is having some “heart related” symptoms. I don’t know any specifics, but obviously this is very concerning, and moreso in a vaccinated person.
ETA: The coworker and her husband both had Pfizer. I don’t know if they were vaccinated around the same time.