Maybe I am slightly naïve, but my god we’re holding wrestling tournaments?
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What are the cliffs on why supply is shrinking? Multiple places seems to get less and less vaccine shipment each subsequent week.
I can’t access the article but generally speaking a system where a doctor can vaccinate his friends and family at will would create corruption and incentives to just oops end up with a punctured vial. If they are qualified they can go the regular route.
Agreed. So, then the solution must be to throw away some doses. But that doesn’t play well either. I’d have punished him, but just not as harshly.
My Dad is now 16 days from his second Pfizer jab and 30 days from maximum efficacy. So glad he doesn’t live in California.
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Good video if you have an anti-vaxxer who you think might be convincable.
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Cliffs: Donald Trump
https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1353057276320313344
Weird thread that I don’t understand.
That thread isn’t in my wheelhouse, but I get everything they say. Is there any specific question that you have?
Who’s right between Rasmussen and Frieden, and should we be scared of the covid rate of mutation or not? A lot of commenters seem to be trying to tip-toe around saying they’re both right - which I assume must mean they’re both highly esteemed in their fields.
I’m much less interested in who’s technically right even if it’s both of them - and more interested in Freiden’s point that the rate of mutation is scary.
That’s two separate questions. Frieden is obviously wrong about the rate of mutation, flu is much higher. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried though.
Then why are tons of commenters saying both are technically right? Check out the comments. It’s weird.
Is there a specific comment that is giving you pause? Rasumussen is obviously 100% correct in every possible way that I can think of. Hell flu goes around the world every damn year with a fresh new strain that is so heavily mutated that the prior dominant strain provides little to no protection.
https://twitter.com/DrTomFrieden/status/1353060491518644232
https://twitter.com/DrTomFrieden/status/1353061078897319937
https://twitter.com/barubaruc/status/1353160944809959424
https://twitter.com/spudz_mc/status/1353068950221774850
https://twitter.com/billcrawford191/status/1353105000461963265
COVID mutates much more slowly than most RNA viruses due to an odd proofreading protein I’ve mentioned here before. Having said that, it will inevitably evolve over time so there’s reason to be concerned about that.
Basically the raw mutation rate is higher in the flu virus because
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Coronavirus has some error correction mechanism
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Flu is segmented and can rearrange the segments when two different flu viruses infect the same host. Coronavirus does not do this.
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Flu has multiple animal hosts and readily moves between them and humans which increases the chance of rearrangement/recombination events. Coronavirus does not do this with any frequency relative to flu virus.
The above is pretty hard science.
HOWEVER
the net appearance of new dominant strains is the product of inherent mutation rate x the number of infections x some natural selection pressure (simplifying a little bit). So Friedman is claiming that this product is currently higher for Coronavirus which is one of those things that seem obvious but is a bit speculative because we are looking so closely.
Certainly their are more Cv infections and high selection pressure to overcome social distancing and medications.
So yup. Both are right but they are saying different things. Rasmussen is on stronger scientific footing, but Friedman’s observation is likely more practically relevant.
The cool thing is that if we can take away Cv ability to mass infect we can actually drive down that net term.
A note on natural selection—overcoming big negatives are much rarer. A little bit more shedding or a little stronger spike binding will occur at a higher frequency than overcoming a single antibody which will occur at a higher frequency than overcoming acquired immunity Of a broad immune system response (natural or vaccine).
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The idea that it’s mutating faster because it’s spreading faster isn’t supported either, although I don’t think we can objectively say it’s wrong.
Regardless, this is a classic internet message board thing where someone says something obviously wrong A, then when they get called out they say A really means B.
Moderna is supposed to be 28 days.
Also, based on the evidence that we have, if anything, spreading the dose out farther apart will increase the efficacy (after the second dose). Obviously, you are at a disadvantage between doses with a longer delay. Yes, I realize above is not proven.
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Yes.
The idea that there are more mutants doesn’t mean it’s mutating faster. Partly it may be observer effect of actively looking at lots of genomes but I do that it’s probable that lots of infections means either a higher raw number of mutants occur and/or advantageous mutants have more opportunities to become significant fractions of the total population. (Id put my $ on the combo).
Regardless the answer is the same. Make it difficult on the damn thing to find new hosts.
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