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kris alman's avatar

The pseudoscience behind the politicized strategies to mitigate this pandemic remind me of the pseudoscience of economic theory. When the real world doesn't conform to the textbooks, do we still cling to the mathematics that support neoclassical (or neoliberal) economic theory?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/05/the-protesters-who-are-trying-to-upend-the-fantasy-world-of-economics/

I was struck by another Washington Post article headline yesterday: "Booster shots won’t stop the delta variant. Here’s the math to prove it." Their tagline was this: "Vaccinating more people would help more than giving another dose to the vaccinated"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/coronavirus-vaccine-booster-shots/2021/08/11/aefec5dc-fae0-11eb-9c0e-97e29906a970_story.html

Delving in to R0 and Re mathematics, they explained "The Re helps us estimate how much a disease may spread when a population has at least some immunity."

Never mind that "some immunity" includes all those people who are vaccinated that are increasingly getting breakthrough infections.

The Lancet has had its share of controversies during this pandemic. But this article is a good one to read (except we can all cough when reading "relatively low mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2"): SARS-CoV-2 evolution and vaccines: cause for concern?

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00075-8/fulltext

"From this overview, only data on influenza might suggest that evolution in SARS-CoV-2 could eventually lead to a less efficacious vaccine. A protective factor is the relatively low mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2, although prolonged infection in immunocompromised hosts might accelerate mutation.5 However, the length of the spike protein used by licensed vaccines is relatively short (∼1270 amino acids), and one preprint paper has indicated that the natural antibody response to infection (and presumably also to a spike protein-based vaccine) is concentrated in just two sections of the protein: the N-terminal domain (NTD) and receptor-binding domain (RBD).6... Another notable finding is that SARS-CoV-2 passaged in the presence of polyclonal antibodies (in the form of convalescent sera) can also mutate and escape neutralisation by the multiple antibodies. In a series of experiments described in a 2020 preprint, SARS-CoV-2 was grown in the presence of neutralising COVID-19 convalescent plasma from a recovered patient.9 After serial passages, three mutations were generated (a deletion and insertion in the NTD loops, and a point substitution in the RBD) that allowed the newly formed variant to become completely resistant to plasma neutralisation... An unresolved question is the effect that the reported mutations might have on T cell immunity, which is known from vaccine trials to be robustly stimulated by the recombinant spike protein. T cell escape has been well described for persisting viruses such as HIV, HBV, and hepatitis C virus.15"

This potential to evade vaccines includes a potential to evade detection. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-00845-3

With a pivot to "What's causing long COVID?"

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/whats-causing-long-covid

"What’s the mechanism behind why some people are developing these syndromes? Chris Smith spoke to Yale Immunologist Akiko Iwasaki...

Akiko - So there are a couple of theories that are now posed to explain long COVID. One is a lingering virus or a viral reservoir that persists in a person that can stimulate chronic inflammation. The other possibility is autoimmunity; that even a mild viral infection can trigger autoimmunity, which has long-term consequences."

Both of these hypotheses are concerning. But when the virus lingers and/or evade detection (think immunocompromised hosts in a hospital setting; in a nursing home or in high-density living), we are in big trouble when public health agencies assert that full vaccination is the key to ending this pandemic, and tell us to doff masks and put full faith in rapid tests and vaccine status.

I do think we have to prepare for the failures we had in developing HIV vaccines to control this pandemic, with attention to pre-existing candidate antiviral drugs and existing ones, like ivermectin, unless it too becomes resistant to mutant strains.

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Joseph C's avatar

I appreciate your work sir. How you manage to do it all baffles me.

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