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Lab tests: Eli Lilly, Regeneron antibody therapies lose out against Omicron

Oh well...

Get your jabs you anti-vaxx Karens.

So here we are.
It’s been Joe ‘the adults are back in the room’ Biden’s pandemic. And what’s changed to help us with, what looks to be the most transmissible disease of the century?
Do they have defenses in depth set up? No, they don’t
Do we have any early treatment protocols? Nope
Did they shut down international travel? No
Have they developed indoor air quality requirements to mitigate viral loads of an air borne disease? Naw.
Have they politicized vaccine uptake? Oh yes, to the hilt.

Should the CDC be burned to the ground, metaphorically, and the earth salted? Absolutely!

I only see the corps in charge pushing a ‘vax’ at the expense of doing any competent public health.

I guess we’ll know in the next month how much the press and politico’s were complicit in selling the Hopium of Omicrom’s mildness. Another take would be how complicit our corporate politics have been to underplay what’s coming and salvage the retail holiday that’s upon us.

Hopefully, no one here will be hit with Omicron and need medical services. I hope this post is hyperbolic, when looked at in January. I guess we’ll know then if there’s been any adults in charge.

The doubling rate for Omicron appears to be 2-3 days. That is incredibly fast - 70% faster than Delta. It will be the dominant strain within the month. Let us hope that it proves to be less deadly, because the inoculation rater to reach herd immunity will be >95%. What's worse, is that the level of reinfection is so high.

"The new study from Discovery Health shows that two shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which provided more than 90% protection against the original virus, is only 33% protective against omicron infection.

Full vaccination continues to provide 70% protection against severe disease, which seemed to hold up across high-risk groups, though it declined somewhat in people over 60 and even more in those over 70.
....
"Seventy percent is definitely a dropdown. It isn't great," he said. "It was 95% effective severe disease when it was delta variant and then about 85% after six months of waning," he said. ... Other research from Pfizer-BioNTech suggests that a third, booster dose can restore the original levels of protection at least for some period of time.
....
People infected in South Africa's first wave early last year, have a 73% chance of reinfection, while those infected with the beta variant have a 60% chance of reinfection and those infected in its most recent delta wave face a 40% risk of reinfection with omicron, the new study showed.

That fits with findings from a preliminary briefing released by the United Kingdom on Friday showing an approximately three- to eight-fold increased risk of reinfection with the omicron variant". 'Spreading at a rate we have not seen' - Omicron more resistant to COVID-19 vaccines (USA Today)

That blows the "natural immunity" claim out of the water.

Looking beyond the pharma press releases there’s the rate vs. scale being a kinda numerator with the material conditions of the health care bizness the denominator.

There’s been a lot of strike waves happening and the labor conditions line on the spread sheet has not been good.

As we’re all in on VaxVaxVax this focuses all the reaction to cases reaching hospitals. The availability and bed thruput will be a gulley washer and if services won’t be available all above mentioned numbers will have to be revised upwards. Maybe not..,

An anecdotal bit, my 81 year old retired mother of 40 yrs. nursing, has been getting offers of 6 month contracts at 5k/wk to join contract labor co’s hospitals are desperate to plug gaps with. Did I mention there’s been nursing staff strikes? Woulda been cheaper to give em higher wages maybe?

No prophylactic treatments, no depth of defense. All in on a non-sterilizing vaccine, not to mention some fat bottom lines.

We’re doing D with Z like everyone else, we’re on the cusp of the higher risk zone. I’m doing the providone nasel spray before and after entering public spaces. May gargle too.

What’s Fauci been telling everyone to do for depth of defense?

Just kidding..

I think getting your Vitamin D levels up has been a pretty good prophylactic right from the beginning. MABs as theraputics have been around for a very long time, but they do tend to be extremely variant-specific. That's why the original "bam-bam" one from Regeneron was stopped soon after other variants appeared, and replaced by MAB "cocktails". They are generally a single (monoclonal) antibody against one specific part of the virus spike protein. There are three locations on the spike protein receptor binding site they can bind with, and Delta had changes in two of those. Omicron has changes in all three. That's why MABS tend to be much less effective as variants emerge. But if you get the right MAB for your variant, they work pretty well.

Still not as well as the mRNA vaccines. Keep in mind that we only have ONE sterilizing vaccine: HPV. Every other vaccine on Earth is not. They prevent serious illness and death, mostly. The fact that some SARS-COV2 vaccines do prevent almost all symptomatic disease before natural antibody contraction was just gravy. Nobody expected that. Remember, CDC said a 70% effective vaccine would be great. And that's 70% effective at preventing serious illness or death. Instead we got MUCH better vaccines by lucky accident. Antibody level contraction is exactly how the immune system works. It's not a "vaccine problem". It's a natural immune system function. Keeping high levels of circulating antibodies against everything you ever encounter would be lethal.

That's why we have memory T and B cells. Those are another layer of the immune system that remembers antigens, and quickly make new antibodies if they see it. Much quicker than the initial exposure. And they do that for years. People who recovered from SARS1 more than a decade ago still have memory T and B cells for it, and because of a natural evolution of antibody genes they respond to SARS-COV2 as well! The mRNA vaccines elicit a very good T and B cell response, and T cells use a much larger number of epitopes than antibodies, so they are much better at handling variants. Omicron infections in South Africa seem to be very mild, because most everybody already had Delta and their T-cells respond very well to Omicron. If you are triple-vaxxed, you get the same response.

I watched a YouTube video from Laura Walker the other day about making much broader MABs. They started with frozen serum sample from SARS1 patients, isolated antibodies, and ran the evolution in their lab. What they got was antibodies that work against SARS1, SARS-COV2, MERS, and any possible variant. And they are much much stronger than any of the current MABs. They are in clinical 2/3 trials right now. They also modified the antibody stem so it lasts about 6 months. Near the end of her talk, she also mentioned making vaccines against the invariant portion of these viruses that their antibody binds with. Those vaccines would work against every variant, and even against future corona virus spillovers.

I agree 100% with chunkstyle about labor shortages: It's an indictment against our economic system, because we are so far up conservative bungholes, employers can't understand that when people resist doing certain obnoxious jobs, you have to pay them more. That's a heretical concept after decades of wage stagnation. Long Beach port is jammed because no truck drivers? Nursing shortages? "Pay them more? Are you insane? If we pay nurses a living wage, we will have to raise our CEO compensation to a billion dollars a year!"

“ Keep in mind that we only have ONE sterilizing vaccine: HPV. Every other vaccine on Earth is not”

A vaccine that prevents significant infection and no transmission is one definition of sterilizing vaccine. Jenners smallpox fits that definition, no?

The best you can say about the mRNA COVID vaccines is they limit severity. They do not prevent infection or spreading of the virus. Hence the stupidity of the vaxvaxvax crowds with no attention to public health mitigation. Going all in on a market solution while ignoring public health options.

We’re not even sending out simple Corsi boxes to every school classroom for crying out loud. The laziness and greed of our politics to deal with the current reality seems only matched by the public’s appetite to swallow it.

I’d have to say, like everything else in murica, this pandemic has been dumped into the culture wars by both rightwing camps cuz markets. A pox on both their houses.

Drive safe, don’t take up risky hobbies. Medcorp may be booked up for some time.

“ a somewhat unexpected obstacle has emerged that deserves attention. Though Congress passed legislation mandating that Covid-19 vaccines be free at the point of use for all U.S. residents, around one-third of unvaccinated people cited fear of cost as a significant reason they’ve yet to get the jab. Even worse, it’s a barrier for people who seem to genuinely want it: a full 45 percent of those stipulating that they hope to get it “as soon as possible,” compared to only 19 percent of those resolutely opposed.”

Natalie Shure June 7, 2021 Many Mor... Care System Wasn’t So Terrifying

This nugget in my news feed this morning…
No words for it really. The last bit with Fauci’s boss…

Fiddling while we burn?

Oh noooo… the stores!…

Dunno why YouTube vids don’t post for me. All I could do is link out.

The 'editor' method of posting videos doesn't work for me, either, but if I just paste the url directly it comes up as the actual vid in the post.

Over 800,000 dead in the US, and they are too lazy to ask anybody where they can get a free vaccine? I don't think so. I think they have other reasons for not wanting to get it, and they use cost as an excuse. There are all sorts of people and institutions they could ask, and be directed to a free vaccine clinic. Hell, their local drug store is probably giving them out for free. But these folks are afraid to ask any drugstore employee? They have to buy food: Around here many supermarkets have pharmacies, and ANY employee of the market would direct you to them for a free vaccine.

I think it's a lot more likely they are afraid. Those "1 case of mild transitory cardiomyopathy per 3,5 million vaccinations" stories in the media have them terrified, even though your chances of getting hit by lightening are seven times higher. These are the folks that are so innumerate they are counting on the lottery for their retirement plan.

And yes, the mRNA vaccines are much more effective than almost any other vaccine ever made. That's not my opinion. It's that of professional virologists and immunologists.