Israel has more people vaccinated than the USA. Israel has found that the Pfizer vaccine is only about 40% effective against preventing infection or symptoms. This is down from 95+% effective against earlier variants. The Pfizer vaccine is still 90% effective against preventing severe illness.
The Mayo clinic in the US was seeing a drop to 75% effectiveness in preventing hospitalization in July.
The Delta variant has about 1000 times the viral load compared to earlier variants.
SOURCES – CDC
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
The point here is that if a virus spreads via aerosols or droplets, and does not live long on surfaces, it needs a host that stays healthy enough to walk around sneezing on other people in order to spread. So it's counter-survival to make the host really ill, and it evolves towards having less severe effects on the host. And so multiple viruses evolve into "the common cold".
If the virus can survive a long time in the environment, or otherwise has a mode of spread that isn't so dependent on the host remaining mobile, then evolution doesn't drive it towards reduced severity, and you tend to get illnesses that frequently kill.
The real problem has been viruses that have just jumped from a different species, and haven't evolved to be a good fit to humans, and are really more lethal than is actually adaptive.
And, yes, colonization from Europe frequently killed off large fractions of native populations, when Europeans brought with them diseases they had already been selected for resistance to, and introduced them to naive populations. The classic example was smallpox.
But that's NOT the common cold! We didn't evolve resistance to that, it evolved to be less deadly.
Symptoms are caused by the virus metabolism IN THE HOST. Very different viruses that attack the same type of cells will cause some specific symptoms due to the peculiarity of their viral metabolism and some common symptoms due to the type of cells in the body that got infected.
Viruses that attack the respiratory tract usually cause sneezing/coughing because the body is reacting to the swelling of the epithelia (due to the inflammatory response that recruits the immune system to get rid of the infected cell), this produces mucus and the body tries to expel it. This is a common response and it is not dependent on the type of virus, so unrelated viruses can cause the same sort of symptoms.
And I am pretty sure you knew it as well since very different viral and bacterial infection might all cause a very common symptom: fever.
I want to specify that "I do not think" that it is because everyone vulnerable got killed off. WE KNOW that this is what happened. We have written reports from missionaries in the Americas surprised by the fact that the natives died of what were considered mild illnesses back in Europe. The same happened again when Europeans got in contact with tribes in the pacific islands and on the other hand we know that Europeans have been more susceptible to the different strains of plague that got back in Europe from middle east and India during the crusades or after the mercantile expansion of the 17th century.
Right, over 200 different and often unrelated viruses causing the same sorts of symptoms, and you think it's because everyone vulnerable got killed off. Rather than an evolutionary sweet spot that viruses evolve towards if they can, because it's adaptive to just make the host sick enough to be transmitted, and no more, if you need a living host to be transmitted.
The explanation is that the common cold has been the killer plague for thousands of years and humans significantly susceptible to common cold have been already wiped out from the gene pool and all the variants of the common cold do not find very vulnerable pathways in our metabolism to exploit as they have already been strengthened, made redundant or removed.
Possibly true, but you can choose to be one of the people who pass on these increasingly bad strains, or one of the people hammered by them.
I got hit by the delta variant about 2 weeks ago and it was miserable. Probably the worst flu-like situation I've ever experienced.
I'd rather be Typhoid Mary and pass on the disease to others than get this again, full force.
And from what I hear, there's limited herd immunity from actually having covid delta. So I'm not bulletproof now.
As a rule of thumb, I can't trust anyone whose title is "expert". None of these "experts" are ever right about anything.
Nobody goes to college to get a degree in Expertology. Being an "expert" is not a real thing. Just watch the nonsense coming from someone's mouth the next time the News introduces them as an "expert".
Also of note, nearly everything took all day. Go in for the test, wait in the car, come back, etc. and it's all day. I went in at 8AM and didn't have medicine until 5PM. There was a line everywhere. My whole family got it all at once, and my one son bounced back pretty fast. He carried the family for two weeks.
The only thing that was fast was the mono clonal antibody infusion. It took about 2.5 hours total. It wasn't too bad. Barely felt it.
I wasn't going to get the vaccine before but now I think I will. First off, my work promises to harass everyone who doesn't get it. Many do. I don't need that.
It looks like the vaccine protects you, but you can still transmit the disease without any symptoms. Essentially you become Typhoid Mary. But I'm going to have to be selfish here. Better you than me. I can't go through all that again.
As much as I still distrust Big Pharma, Dr. Fauci, and Bill Gates, I don't see a lot of real choice here. Maybe by design.
As someone who is recovering from covid (probably the delta variant) I can tell you it was no joke. At first it was a minor annoyance (an occasional chill) but the I noticed I lost all smell. Gasoline, acetone, and clorox all smelled "strong" but they didn't have any actual smell.
I got tested and they put me on a Z-pack. I was already taking the tonic water, zinc, D-3 and C. That may have helped some but it sure didn't cure it.
Next thing I know I was so looped out I didn't know what day it was. Nothing made sense. I slept 16-20 hours a day, in a fog.
If you get diagnosed, ask them to immediately refer you for the mono clonal antibody infusion. I took that a week later and at least it cleared up my mind.
I got pneumonia as a side effect, and they gave me another antibiotic for that. My smell is almost back.
Symptoms are not weird side effects, they are due to the specific lifecycle of the virus in your body, what does not cause symptoms is not really using your body and there is always a trade-off between longer incubation and the possibility of your host to develop an immune response. Even with years before the symptomatic phase HIV is still very poor at spreading (we are comparing it to other viruses that could infect hundreds by sitting in a crowded place for few hours), but it could play the long game because it hides in the immune system. But once the immune response is compromised it spreads to other cell types. Usually other more virulent infections (like the common cold) attack you as well at that point, but even if they were not present, the HIV virus would eventually kill you.
Common cold viruses have been aroun for thousands of years and killed millions. All the very susceptible strains of human genomes have been already wiped out, but if your highly selected genome encodes for a poor immune system (or if you are immuno suppressed) you can still die very quickly by common cold. The virus will exploit every cell he could, our population has just been enriched in people that can keep it at bay. But every year a new strain outcompetes the previous, they are generally equivalent on the grand scheme of things, but no virus that does a worst job than its predecessor survives the competition. It just happens that after many thousandsof years onlythe very resistant hosts survive and reproduce. New viruses have whole new decks of tricks to throw at us.
Who made that the goal? Actual pharma researchers? Or media/political commentators who became medical experts in 1 week, and next week they'll be just as expert on Afghan politics.
Viruses don't care about lethal or benign. They only care about the spread. If a symptom increases spread (such as Brett's example of things like Cholera, where the host leaking mass fluid everywhere will contaminate the water supply) then that symptom will be increased.
If a symptom reduces spread the drive is to minimise the symptom.
HIV spread rather well because it was years before you show any symptoms. If you NEVER showed symptoms it would have spread even more.
I think you need to explain why over 200 viruses cause the common cold, and none of them are turning into killer plagues.
Exploiting the host DNE killing the host. Often it means NOT killing the host, because a dead host can't spread the virus.
Generally, the real problem are viruses that have just jumped from a different host, and are poorly adapted to humans. HIV was a chimp virus. Covid 19 a bat virus.
No viruses do not become safer. Viruses tend to become ALWAYS MORE LETHAL pecause at every round of selection got selected the viruses that are more capable of exploiting the host the most. Host populations are selected too by the viruses so the population become more resistant, but if a virus get in contact with a host population that did not undergo the same selection the virus will be more lethal on this second population. It is well documented for the colonization of the Americas, for the development of contact with native pacific islands tribes and so on. Viruses do not become less lethal and lethality does not prevent spreading. Before the modern therapies HIV was 100% lethal, yet infected millions with a very inefficient way of spreading.
No. That is not true. Vaccines are still very effective thy still prevent hospitalization in 75-90% of the cases and bear in bind that among the not vaccinated the Delta variant is more severe than previous variants
It's good to be vaccinated. I think that isolation and containment is the only real solution. Why are planes flying from one place to another? Why is travel from high infection areas allowed?
This will never end. Just like the Flu shot the vaccine is a only going to be of value against last years strain (if it even is, there was allot of vaccinated getting sick before the variants appeared which oddly I have not heard or seen a variant identification test to determine). Taking a negligible effective vaccine with a few percent of side effect to fight a virus that has <0.25% serious side effect for healthy people.
Really sad state of US gen pop ability to critical think past the propaganda. The only people these numbers benefit is Big Pharma and corrupt politicks.
I wonder how many Flu and phenomena cases were reported in 2020, 2021 so far, and 2019?
Wear your mask, pay your taxes, don't think, keep your mouth shut, and submit to Big Pharm experimentation along with Politick dictate of our daily day.
Not to wish anyone under the bus, but if I my glance at this chart showed me what I thought I saw, sure glad it was Moderna they were passing out around these parts.
Whether diseases evolve to become 'safer' is dependent on the details of how it spreads. Respiratory viruses tend to do that, because they require actively mobile hosts interacting with others in order to spread, severe symptoms impede their spread. Especially if the virus particles are not particularly robust, and only survive a short while outside the host.
Viruses that can survive for a long time on surfaces, or spread by feces? They don't so much tend to evolve towards weaker forms, because they don't depend on the hosts continuing normal activity.
"Israel has found that the Pfizer vaccine is only about 40% effective against preventing infection or symptoms."
We should NOT conflate asymptomatic and symptomatic infections. Asymptomatic infections are a normal aspect of immune functioning. This "sterilizing immunity" that they've made the goal of vaccination is just a temporary state you get for a while after an infection, when the immune system is still on high alert.
Normal immunity is perfectly consistent with asymptomatic infections, it consists of the immune system responding fast enough to quash the infection before it's symptomatic, which is all you really need for continued health.
Which is why there are several hundred "common colds"; It's the evolutionary sweet spot for respiratory viruses: Optimized for spreading, not killing.
You see this misinterpretation floating around a lot this year.
A lot of people saying "All diseases will become safer over time; this one is becoming more virulent, therefore it must be a specially engineered fake virus that doesn't obey normal laws."
There is a fair amount of oversimplification and misunderstanding the terminology going on.
Diseases evolve to become more virulent ie. to spread more. Because any version that spreads more will spread more, so it will be the one that everyone gets.
Diseases don't evolve to become less dangerous, they evolve so that their effect on the host doesn't prevent spreading. PRoviding 90+% of the hosts live long enough, and don't get so sick they stay home, and don't look so sick they scare people away, so they can infect a few other people, there is very little evolutionary drive to become even less dangerous.
And they will become more infectious if there is a big viral load shedding heaps of infectious particles. But a big viral load means lots of viral reproduction in your cells, which damages and kills your cells. So there are opposing driving forces.
Virulent does not mean dangerous to each person, but it does mean more dangerous to the population as a whole.
So the disease we are seeing doesn't break any of the "rules" of disease evolution. Which aren't rules anyway, more driving pressures.
None of which proves that this ISN'T a deliberately made virus. Just that you'll need far more sophisticated evidence.
I remember in an earlier article a commenter pointed out the mRNA volume in the Moderna shot was something like 3x more than Phizer (maybe 30 micrograms compared to 100 micrograms)? That might be a simple explanation of the difference in effectiveness when the mRNA sequences themselves are otherwise surprisingly similar between the two (and the differences might not matter much).
That might be providing a raw physical advantage, and also why we see more Moderna arm rashes as the reaction is due to increased physical amount of mRNA.
More virulent (transmissible), yes; more deadly, no. Viruses only goal is to propagate. This is why deadly diseases like Ebola rarely get beyond a few dozen people who are isolated quickly, mostly die, and then the virus goes back to being animal-hosted (people should stop eating bushmeat, but try telling that to someone with no other source of meat).
The flu mutates every year, and the shots are only 50-70% effective, and flu DOES kill millions every year, we've just somehow learned to live with that, and that's what's going to have to happen with Covid too. Treatments will be, and are being, improved. But it's endemic now, and won't be wiped out. Healthier Americans will also get selected for. Having lower co-morbidities makes a huge difference in outcome, even if there'll always be a few healthy individuals who get sick or die in a disease that effects millions every year.
Those are damn big confidence intervals.
Basically, we don't know if the vaccines do much of anything based on this report.
More, actually. The *goal* of any self respecting virus is to totally hide and eventually get incorporated into the host's DNA itself.
If that was true, flu vaccines would have created the worst virus ever.
The virus don't care if the host dies (as long as most still survive), they care if they remain being propagated. A virus that creates a mild infection yet is very contagious would still be evolutionarily successful.
I believe there was a paper written on how vaccines that do not prevent transmission may be self selecting more virulent and deadly strains to propagate.