Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Appears To Work Against New Coronavirus Strains, Study Finds (cnn.com) 51
A new study provides early evidence that a Covid-19 vaccine might be effective against two new coronavirus strains first identified in South Africa and the UK, despite a concerning mutation. CNN reports: The two strains share a mutation known as N501Y that scientists worry could allow the virus to evade the immune protection generated by a vaccine. In research posted online Thursday, scientists found that antibodies from people who had received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed "no reduction in neutralization activity" against a version of the virus that carries the N501Y mutation, which they created in the lab. In order to do this, researchers tested the virus against blood from 20 people who had received two doses of the vaccine as part of a clinical trial.
The N501Y mutation is located in the coronavirus' spike protein -- the same structure targeted by vaccines. The virus uses this protein to enter the cells it attacks. This particular mutation appears to help the virus attach to human cells, which may partly explain why these new strains appear to be more transmissible. But it is just one of many mutations in both strains that scientists have worried could make the virus less susceptible to vaccines or treatments. The study -- conducted by researchers at Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch -- does not test the full array of these mutation, nor has it been peer-reviewed.
The N501Y mutation is located in the coronavirus' spike protein -- the same structure targeted by vaccines. The virus uses this protein to enter the cells it attacks. This particular mutation appears to help the virus attach to human cells, which may partly explain why these new strains appear to be more transmissible. But it is just one of many mutations in both strains that scientists have worried could make the virus less susceptible to vaccines or treatments. The study -- conducted by researchers at Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch -- does not test the full array of these mutation, nor has it been peer-reviewed.
On a related note (Score:5, Interesting)
Aside from the potential environmental damage from all the disinfectant currently being used around the world against covid, I wonder how much selection pressure its putting on otherwise harmless germs -not just covid - to mutate into something really resistant and unpleasant to add to the issues with antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
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The flip side is, how many have died out because of the extreme measures taken to halt COVID? Viruses, bacteria and so forth evolved for previously lax measures may well have been wiped out by far stricter PPE, cleaning, isolation protocols, and social distancing so it could really go either way.
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Re: On a related note (Score:3)
Given how utterly half-assed almost all those uses of disinfectant were, especially with laypeople, I'd say we haven't wiped out a thing. Except those 99,9% that had the least resistance to disinfectants. Taking the remainong 0.1% all of a few hours to reconquer the lands.
P.S.: TL;DR: (Score:1)
"Bacteria stronk, remove long pig [wiktionary.org]!"
Re: On a related note (Score:3)
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https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com]
https://www.bibliomed.org/?mno... [bibliomed.org]
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You ever wondered why no disinfectant ever claims to kill 100% of germs? There's a reason for that and its not just legal arse covering.
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Disinfectants tend not to breed mutations because they tend to kill germs with overwhelming force. We don't use them internally because they would also kill us with overwhelming force if we did that.
Re:On a related note (Score:5, Informative)
Disinfectants are not antibiotics. Antibiotics are ingested by the bacteria and interfere with some operation or other that leads to their death. Antibiotic resistance comes from the bacteria adapting so the mechanism no longer works.
Disinfectants are chemical methods of destroying the bug and they work by chemically reacting with things on the bug.
Soap and water are very effective against COVID, because the soap dissolves the lipid shell of the virus (basically the soap tears apart the fat molecules making up the shell), destroying it. The only mutation that the virus can do would be to change its shell to something else.
Likewise other disinfectants like bleach, hand sanitizer, etc., work in exactly the same way - they cause a chemical reaction with the bug that destroys it.
Chemical agents are much harder to mutate protection against. It's possible, but mutations are much rarer
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I'm sure people said the same about bacteria being able to live in 100C+ water before black smokers were discovered deep in the ocean. Biology can surprise you.
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ITYF thats not always the case. Eg tardigrades.
EXACTLY! (Score:1)
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Since most of this stuff is alcohol-based, basically no risk.
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So you don't think any microorganisms can survive in alcohol for a few seconds until it evaporates? Seriously? I think you need to go and do some research. Start with brewers yeast.
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1. Alcohol-based disinfectants are perfectly adequate for COVID-19
2. Alcohol is abundantly present in nature, so no increased risk
Do you have trouble understanding the context something was written in? Or maybe you cannot understand more complex relationships at all and "disinfectant -> mutation" is already at the upper end of what your mind can do?
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I suggest you go read my original post you cretinous mouth breather - I wasn't talking about covid specifically. I assume you can read?
And yes, well done, alcohol is present in nature! There's no fooling you is there!
Assclown.
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Very nice. (Score:2)
If it had resistance we should have called it Covid-20.
In any case - a focus on eliminating the disease is crucial so we don't end up with Covid-21 rather soon.
Just like we don't want a Polio-21, or a Smallpox-21.
Disease management is a crucial governmental function that can't be overlooked because it's inconvenient. It's a lot less convenient to lose increasing percentages of your nation.
Ryan Fenton
Re: Very nice. (Score:1)
Yeah, but you do that with regular contraception and having fewer than two kids on average.
Though nature has different ideas about massive monocultures or species that grow too dominant. :)
I wonder if some very unlike us extraterrestrial species would see Covid at an attempt at a cure for planet Earth... Because I might be that species then. ;)
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Only if they were very stupid extraterrestrials....
Covid-19, for all it's gotten a lot of people very excited, just isn't all that lethal. It's not even as bad as the Spanish Flu (about 100 years ago now), much less the Black Death (about 2/3 of a millenium ago now).
Frankly, if the aliens really wanted to remove us from the planet, they'd be best off by destroying every power plant on the plan
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That is a known garbage source of information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Have any information sources that aren't just that? I'm not biased against conservative news - just spoof/conspiracy websites like that. Fox news for instance usually backs up or retracts on their actual news pieces.
Ryan Fenton
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If history is any guide, we'll end up with another pandemic strain of covid in +/- 20 years. To avoid that, China needs to control their COVID reservoir, or find a way to sever the chain between humans and the reservoir. This is nothing bad with China, whatever country has the reservoir has to contain it.
Re:Very nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
Coronavirus infected bats live on all continents except Antarctica, as do flu infected pigs.
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I'm kind of hopeful. I think this might have been the necessary and sufficient wake-up call we needed. It could have been much, much worse - imagine, say, just a 3% death rate and a little longer incubation and infectiousness. And imagine worse, say some ebola type shit that spreads in ways other than bathing yourself in people's blood.
There's no reason we can't conquer infectious diseases like this. If we did some type of biotech moonshot we could develop the tech to identify and start spitting out vaccine
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Next will be imperfect/semi-perfect/perfect covid, after it absorbs covid 17 and 18's genetic material.
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>>Next will be imperfect/semi-perfect/perfect covid, after it absorbs covid 17 and 18's genetic material.
Yes - well we DO happen to have a president that was the vice president of the previous one, who is somehow more 'mature' than the previous one, in charge after an absence.
It's almost as irresponsible to expect him to tackle this problem - but I'm hoping he'll be able to handle the situation with some help behind the scenes from everyone. A genki-dama shared effort, if you will.
Because I don't thi
Re: Spreading pretty fast... (Score:2)
Re: Spreading pretty fast... (Score:2)
Yes, life wants to grow and spread as much as possible. And the most successful mutation at that, usually wins out. News at 11.
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You're talking to an idiot. You can tell when they use that pattern of noticing some obvious fact, then ending the sentence with an ominous "almost as if...", ellipses included. These stupid fucks also like to say stuff like "Hmm, how come only Republican politicans are coming down/dying from Covid? It's almost as if..."
Why, I didn't claim anything specific, _just noticing_! Or the old "Hey, I'm just asking questions, I'm not saying lizard people run the world!".
Dumb conspiracy theory assholes are all the s
So proud of this country (Score:5, Insightful)
While medical professionals have been warning for months we need to get our case load down or else deaths would soar, Americans valiantly, and courageously, ignored such warnings. After all, what do those "professionals" know? They think because they have a degree and decades of experience they can tell us what's best for us to not get sick?
Congratulations, America! You showed them. On January 7th, the country recorded nearly 4,100 deaths from covid-19 [cnn.com], the most ever. The most in the world. Say it with me: We're number one! We're number one!
It brings a tear to my eye knowing Americans have the wherewithal to go their own way and not abide by any silly notions of protecting themselves or others. Who cares that 430 years ago a doctor [bbc.com], without the benefit of any modern medicine or science, figured out keeping at least six feet apart, washing your hands, not having dances or large gatherings, and only having one person go out for food or shopping would slow or halt the spread of the plague.
As we approach the half million dead mark, let me congratulate this country on the great job it's doing. Keep up the good work. If you stick to your guns, we'll have ten times the number of people dying from covid in one year compared to the flu in no time.
Re: So proud of this country (Score:1)
And you're American. So there's that. :D
Created in a lab? (Score:2)
Instead of usinf the original?
That's extremely fishy.
Since it's often the combination of several changes.
E.g. pushing the throttle of your running car won't do a thing, and neither will putting it in gear. But combine the two...
So only changing gears is not exactly a great test.
Or maybe the reporting is crap again.
Multiple Epitopes (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not surprising, because the immune system works on several subsets of the protein known as epitopes [libretexts.org]. Epitopes are relatively short peptide sequences (up to ~ 15 amino acids), rather than the whole spike protein, which has several hundreds of amino acids.
If a handful of these peptide sequences have a change because of mutations, then there are plenty of other epitopes left for the spike protein (at least 16 of them [wiley.com] from a study that lists them as vaccine candidates).
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Indeed ... although with enough mutations, there is less and less efficacy. Blame it on people who keep the virus transmitting (and therefore mutating all the time).
Over the past year, I have been trying to learn as much as possible about virus in general (Vincent Racaniello's Columbia University Virology course), how the immune system works (Brianne Barker's course, partially), and various vaccine technologies (potential efficacy issues w
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What about the other vaccines? (Score:2)
What about the other vaccines, like the Moderna one?
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Almost certainly (>90%) the same situation, at least until the RNA that codes for the spike protein acquires a few more mutations.
At that point however the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines will, theoretically at least although it remains to be seen how the various regulatory agencies around the world treat the issue, have a large advantage because they can simply sequence the new variant, change the mRNA they're packaging up in their lipid coats, and bingo we have a vaccine against the new variants. Quick
it is biontech vaccine (Score:2)