Recently, a Honolulu Zoo lion tested positive for Covid and died.
No wonder. The virus that causes outbreaks of FIP in catteries is also a coronavirus. There was a story in the Atlantic about veterinary use of remdesevir… the active drug was tested on cats and was quite a miracle cure for FIP. Was looking for that article and found this review.
For the first time in a long time when I passed by an urgent care place that offers COVID-19 testing, it had a long line (outdoors marked in the parking lot). From probably June until recently, there was hardly anyone there. Looks like there are some people getting tested before travel or visits with elderly relatives or some such.
I’m traveling to see my elderly MIL for Thanksgiving and am bringing a bunch of Binax Now tests. We’ll all take a test Thanksgiving morning. Not perfect, but can’t hurt.
More info pointing towards a greater immune response if Pfizer doses are spread further apart…I would hope we take what we’ve learned over the past months into consideration…especially since we are now jabbing 5 year olds.
‘While the administration of a second dose to previously infected individuals did not significantly improve humoral responses, we observed a significant increase of humoral responses in naïve individuals after the 16-weeks delayed second shot, achieving similar levels as in previously infected individuals. We compared these responses to those elicited in individuals receiving a short (4-weeks) dose interval. For the naïve donors, these responses were superior to those elicited by the short dose interval.’
Re: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.17.21263532v2
Basically, it looks like humoral (antibody) response:
I~V_V = I~V > V_V > V.V
I = infection, V = vaccination (Pfizer), _ = long interval (16 weeks), . = short interval (4 weeks), ~ = varied interval
Of course, for those not previously infected, using a long interval between doses means having only first dose protection (lower than two dose protection) for a longer period of time. (So some people may want three doses for this reason.)
New variant B.1.1.529 being studied…
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w
I saw this news yesterday too. It’s really, really frustrating.
I didn’t like the original movie or the sequel (Delta). I really don’t want to sit through another episode.
I wonder how quickly they could modify vaccines if they have to.
The mRNAs can be modified in as little as a day, once they have the sequence. Of course, it would take longer to test efficacy.
And production. Glad to know the science behind modification is super quick though. Every little bit helps.
I wonder why they never modified it for Delta
From my understanding, they did, but it didn’t improve outcomes over the original versions, so they abandoned the trial.
EDIT: looks like the trials are still ongoing. The delta spike protein is so similar though that they don’t expect any additional efficacy.
Why bother if the existing vaccines still work? The testing and approval processes take a long time.
That’ll be the big question for this new variant. According to the Nature article, there are 30 changes in the spike protein. I guess it’ll depend on what and where they are, but it’s odd that a mutation of the spike would be so successful. The current spike is really good at its job.
According to another article I read this morning, the new variant has 50 mutations, 32 of which are in the spike protein.
It does not seem to prevent making new flu variant vaccines every year, though.
For flu, we can use data from the other hemisphere to predict/determine what variants may become dominant next. It doesn’t seem this model will work for COVID.
We make new flu vaccines yearly because the variants are sufficiently different enough that the previous version would be completely ineffective. There has been less drift in COVID…thankfully!
Anecdotally I’ve noticed that those who worry more seem to get affected more. I’ll admit I’ve wondered if it’s the equivalent of the placebo effect at work.
However, it does look like new vaccines for COVID-19 variants can be made more quickly than new vaccines for flu variants, at least with egg based flu vaccines that take a long time to grow viruses for vaccines.