SARS-CoV-2 Thoughts

Disclaimer : This is an opinion and a prediction that includes as many sources and the best logic possible. Do not base your personal health decisions on it. Plain Language Introduction SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus with its closest relatives in bats, emerging in the human population at some point in late 2019. As a newly introduced pathogen, there was only one variant at first. Now we have thousands of strains that have been identified, with countless individual virus particles with countless mutations. The genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is much greater than scientists thought it would be by this point in time. Recombination and Evolution That's because we failed to notice that SARS-CoV-2 relies heavily on recombination for evolution. With recombination, in a host that is infected with two strains of the virus, the virus can effectively create a child from two parent virions(a virion is a single virus) through a process called strand switching. When creating a new vi...

There are five fascinating things about our choice to use booster shots. I will try to explain each, but unfortunately, some introduction is necessary first. COVID Vaccines: How Good are They Really? Global governments have bet the farm on vaccination eradicating (remember when we used to talk about "herd immunity"?) or greatly prolonging the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 as a widespread pathogen to such a great extent that they're deploying vaccine passports for routine, daily activities , demonstrably not a great idea almost regardless what you want to achieve. It was immediately apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was very contagious. Later studies found it to have had a base initial R0 of around 5.7, compared to around 1.3 for the average influenza strain. That meant that achieving an effective vaccine was always going to be extremely hard: a 40% effective flu vaccine could bring Reff close to or below 1, but a 40% effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine would come nowhere close. The ...

Summary: The "efficacy" of a vaccine(VE) is a convenient number, but it's often provided without vital context that would ensure it is interpreted correctly. There are different kinds of efficacy that matter, and the numbers reported are often at peak levels following vaccination. It is in the commercial, professional, and political interest of drugmakers, the media, virologists, and policymakers to emphasize the highest number to demonstrate the power of the vaccines. The 3 primary outcomes that vaccination is intended to prevent are severe disease, infection, and transmission. The number for severe disease is likely to be highest, while the number for transmission is likely to be lowest. This is because different aspects of the immune response affect each. There are 3 main takeaways: VE is usually reported in terms of prevention of severe disease, VE can change against infection and severe disease independently, and SARS-CoV-2 is likely to escape from today...

SARS-CoV-2 is known to be a seasonal virus because the amount of viral transmission depends critically on the temperature . There are higher loads of viral inoculum that are transmitted greater distances when it's cold and absolute humidity is lower, and people are more likely to gather inside together for warmth. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.650493/full This is true of all strains, and we are entering autumn with a higher case count than we had last year. Also, last winter, Alpha was dominant nearly entirely alone, and it's not antigenically very distant from the original S protein. Instead, today, we now have many antigenically distant strains and variants of concern(VoCs). Check the dot plot for cross-immunoreactivity between strains in the following article. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/new-sars-cov-2-variants-have-changed-pandemic-what-will-virus-do-next Through those two factors, we should see new domestic highs in case co...