Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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Inactivated vaccine from Iran, Phase 2/3 starts on 3/14. Phase 3 starts in April. Similarly, Vietnam also has a subunit vaccine. starts in May and finish in June by cutting 3 months out of the phase 3 trial. Cuba has 2 types of subunit vaccines, also starts in March and finish in May.
I don't like the fact they are cutting short of phase 3.
B.1.617.1 currently rampant throughout India is indeed sneaky and resistant to antibody, although it seems existing vaccine is still effective against it.
B.1.617.1 has been found to be more virulent in hamsters.
Also, another sub variant has emerged called B.1.617.2, compared to B.1.617.1 the new variant has lost the E484Q mutation but gained T478K mutation (plus other minor mutations). It is known E484Q mutation affects vaccine performance. It's not known what effect T478K mutation has and weather it replacing E484Q in B.1.617.2 is good new or bad new vaccine-wise. It's however suspected T478K mutation further increase binding to ACE2 receptor which has caused B.1.617.2 to spread rapidly in UK, it now makes up 10% of the UK cases.
China should speed up its mRNA vaccines, otherwise Vietnam will brag about their own vaccines.
Its about time Antibody Evasion should be explained. The press hardly covers this highly inconvenient fact.
Let's use some metaphors. Viruses are attacking fighters and antibodies are SAMs. The planes get knocked out by the SAMs unless the planes have overwhelming superiority in sheer numbers, which is comparison to viral load.
But all these viruses are like 3rd or 4th generation fighters. Antibody evasion is the equivalent of a stealth fighter, or stealth features in a fighter.
Antibody evasion occurs in two ways. The first is that the body will either fail to detect the virus or recognize the virus. The second is that the virus is recognized, you have plenty of antibodies, but somehow, due to the skin structure or shape of the virus, or the presence of some coating on the skin of the virus, the antibodies cannot attach to the virus and do its lethal work.
And that's how the human race can be doomed.
Against an antibody evasive virus, it doesn't matter if the vaccine works and the body produces the antibodies, the antibodies just won't work well enough against the virus.
Modi is looking more and more like a guru as his rating erode. Gotta get that spiritual armor to transcend this debacle.....
Here is what he might look like by July:
Bad news. If these variants keep evolving as infections increase (India case..) then we are in huge trouble. It is a simple game of possibilities.
It is one thing to have a 0.0001 chance to evolve a super variant in 1000 infected cases and another thing to have 10.000.000s cases active.
India must be quarantined asap