I’m pretty sure you’re correct. I also think the AstraZeneca vaccine is the first of its kind to get approval. They had been using the technology to try to make a malaria vaccine, and they were failing at it, and this is the first time they’ve gotten it to work. That said, they should have been able to demonstrate safety in prior iterations of this vaccine even if they never could get to efficacy. If they had failed in the safety portion of the malaria trials, you never would have heard about this technology.
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The only real risk of long term effects would be in the stabilizers and preservatives accompanying the active ingredients, not the mRNA (or adeno-associated virus particles, in the AstraZeneca case) itself. The core mechanism of a vaccine is getting your immune system to recognize the very things that it introduced, and if it works, those things would get purged from your body. It would be extraordinarily unusual if that were not to be the case, and there can’t really be long term effects from something that is no longer there.
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These two bits seem somewhat contradictory:
How long do these stablilizers and preservatives stick around?
Second quote refers to mRNA/the proteins the mRNA causes your cells to make/the AAV particles. Those are necessarily destroyed by our immune cells if the vaccine is effective. The stabilizers and preservatives are hopefully a bunch of boring shit like salts found naturally in your body and bovine serum albumin and what have you, but if there are some small synthetic molecules needed for stability, there is a non-zero risk they aren’t metabolized and purged in an efficient manner.
I assume the list of inactive ingredients is public, as we’ve already had people hear that they’re allergic to one or more of them. I can’t be arsed to look, but if there were something dubious, I would figure someone would have raised that question by now.
Ugh. One of my best friends has COVID.
Filipino. Works as a nurse/orderly in the US. Has been super cautious all year. Got the vaccine 10 days ago, continued to be cautious, but just the worst luck.
Lives with his two older parents. Im hoping they fade all fade the worst consequences. This is shit.
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My point is that the specifics don’t matter much.
But they do? Understanding the difference(s) between the strains can result in actionable behavior changes in the populace that can save lives while we wait for our turn for the vaccine.
I don’t know.
The advice before discovery of this strain should have been: “Mask up, distance as much as possible, and keep all interactions to an absolute minimum”
And the advice after this discovery of this strain should also have been: “Mask up, distance as much as possible, and keep all interactions to an absolute minimum”
So the advice is identical. It’s really a question of whether you can get more people to comply. I don’t know if “Hey everyone, we don’t just have COVID we now have super duper contagious COVID” is enough to change the behaviors of many.
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Yes, but what’s the minimum?
Obvious changes we can make are requiring all schools go remote, closing an increasing number of “essential” businesses, etc. And on a personal level, I’m pretty good, but should I stop getting takeout? Should I switch to grocery delivery instead of a weekly trip? Do I need to keep my girls home? Do I need a better mask to go out? Those are all important questions that the different strains may have different answers to.
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I would sincerely like to think that public policy operates at that level of granularity …
I think the correct answer to all of those is the same regardless of strain.
But even if I told you that a new strain was 50% more contagious, I don’t know how to take that information and turn it into an optimal take out frequency > 0%.
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Sure, not everyone does, but some people do, and their lives can be saved by getting better answers in response to the new strain. Just because many people won’t listen doesn’t mean none will.
It’s not literally none. My position is that it likely will be a very low number.
Wearing a mask to pick up an online takeout order with less than a minute inside is, like, technically nonzero risk, but it’s really, really low.
And 1.5x of “really, really, low” is still “really, really, low”. So is 5x for that matter.
The other part is that if you do get covid from takeout, you basically got the minimal dose - which based on a lot of suggestive evidence will very likely help in terms of your eventual sickness. It’s the 3 hour choir practice or 5 hour Christmas party that’s probably going to be more likely to kill you.
If you gave me a choice of two ways to catch covid vs. russian roulette with a gun with 1000 chambers. I’d probably pick covid via takeout, then the gun, then covid via 5 hour Christmas party in close quarters.
My point is that we should social distance and wear masks in either case.
Q Should masking and SD be more strict with a stronger strain?
A Yes
Q But has what we have been doing adequate for the standard strain?
A No
I would argue that TRUE sufficient mask wearing and social distancing for the current strain is also likely adequate for the stronger strain.
That is an open question. It may be true that we not only need real masking and social D like spring but to go even further (severally limiting store occupancy? No planes? Etc?).
(I’m using stronger because I’m assuming the spike protein binding constant is stronger).
I do not mean to imply that we shouldn’t study the hell put of the new strain.
But I am saying that “more strict rules” as a response to the new strain is dicey since, We should have been there already.
Now in terms of practicality, if people want to think as Covid-19-#2 as a reason to follow guidelines and set stricter guidelines that I’m in.
Do those distinctions make sense Wookie?
I’m not so sure. The way we should be dealing with this new strain is largely the same stuff we should have been doing to limit the spread of the old one.
Again, the fact that tons of rubes don’t give a shit doesn’t mean that the particulars of the new strain do not result in actionable improvements that can be undertaken by the people who give a shit. Because this strain can spread while other cases are falling is a demonstration that even good adherence to current guidelines isn’t enough to contain it.
