How close the T Cell and B Cell response is via vaccination to the response via infection is the Key to escaping the pandemic. Ignore antibodies, given the known behaviour of coronaviruses these were always a stopgap protection.
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Dr Rob Whitehurst
@OYCar
Heliocentrist. Erstwhile astrophysicist but now a somewhat agricultural scientist and investor
Blue Mountains New South WalesJoined July 2014
Dr Rob Whitehurst’s Tweets
“The immune system has done an amazing job making Ab responses and memory B cells against SARS-CoV-2 that are educated guesses about potential future variants but takes time … and it is likely disrupted by [new boosters that are too close together]“
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Our extensive scientific review of SARS-CoV-2 immune memory is published. Antibodies, CD4 T cells, CD8 T cells, memory B cells, and tissue resident cells. After vaccination, infection, or both, ready to battle COVID-19. Open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/im @SetteLab
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Why did Japan do so well in controlling covid? Well there are lots of reasons but one of them was not that they closed schools. But rather silent lunches.
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Would love to see a cataclysmic variable accretion disk eclipse curve.
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Amazing transit of an exoplanet around its star revealed by this light curve - but there is more! Each datapoint is a sum of spectra! So there is spectral information (a CAT scan if you like) of the system for each datapoint!
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If you've been wondering why I haven't been answering my emails today... I have been looking at the Early Release Science data from JWST, which was released to the community today!
Here's exoplanet WASP-39b. Look at that transit. Unbelievable. Let's #UnfoldTheUniverse!
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One of the deeply insightful scientific critiques from , a registrar from Southampton. Good to see the support offered to the scientists of whose work he knows little and understands less.
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And yes, I know the answer is "egg". But the ability to easily infect murine species could have been instrumental in opening up recombination & accelerated evolution - this has been speculated about art the origin of Omicron
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P
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Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
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One of the more surprising events during this pandemic. Not the initial viruses but later variants are able to infect mice. Associated with the mutation at position 501 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P
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It should have been obvious from simply thinking about it that woodpeckers' heads don't absorb shocks. The whole point is to pound through wood.
"If their skulls absorbed that energy, they’d just need to pound harder"
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I wrote about woodpeckers.
One of the most commonly cited facts about these birds is that their heads act as shock-absorbers. This crops up in books, news stories, & many scientific papers.
And it's not true. They don't absorb shocks at all. 1/
theatlantic.com/science/archiv
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Every day that passes w/o ↑TPR, reduces the max. possible growth adv./wave size (i.e. as prevalence of BA.2.75 ↑, θ ↓)
There is still the qn of why early WGS data suggested such a large adv. in the first place
w/o much more information, one can only speculate..
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Knowing
a) Current Reff (net) in the city is below 1
b) Estimated current prevalence of BA.2.75 in city/MH
puts an upper bound on the Reff adv. (which is related to growth advantage) of BA.2.75
The inequality is as below: twitter.com/shananalla/sta…
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Another day, another awful IHME study published in the Lancet theguardian.com/society/2022/j Remember all the confident 'all alcohol harmful' headlines in 2018? bbc.co.uk/news/health-45 Well now they have completely changed their minds. 1/3
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Our extensive scientific review of SARS-CoV-2 immune memory is published. Antibodies, CD4 T cells, CD8 T cells, memory B cells, and tissue resident cells. After vaccination, infection, or both, ready to battle COVID-19. Open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/im
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Covid pandemic might not be over and countries with low population immunity still remain at risk, however, for most of Africa with multiple studies reporting 90% seropositivity mainly from infection post Omicron, very much over the acute phase.
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Although extensive immunity evolved against severe Covid from infection in SA, sobering to remember came at cost of >300,000 deaths, with mortality rate of -500 per 100,000 ( among the top 10 globally).
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Inferred infection fatality risk declined 20 fold from 0.67% pre-Omicron to 0.03% with Omicron BA.1 wave. Inferred pre- Covid influenza IFR in SA is 0.05%.
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Here's a thread 🧵 of 's tweets that look like they were meant to be in a thread:
"In short, BA.2.75 is more neutralization evasive than BA.2.12.1, but less compared to BA.4/5. BA.2.75 also exhibits higher ACE2 affinity than BA.4/5"
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Sharing some preliminary results just obtained regarding the new Omicron variants BA.2.75. In short, BA.2.75 is more neutralization evasive than BA.2.12.1, but less compared to BA.4/5. BA.2.75 also exhibits higher ACE2 affinity than BA.4/5. (1/n)
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..if BA.2.75 better escapes Delta and BA.2 immunity (ie the virus that caused the last 2 waves in India) than BA.4/5 then I think that goes a way to explaining whats going on there and may bode well for other parts of the world (particular if it doesnt escape BA.1 immunity well)
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ace2 binding and transmissibility dont have a simple relationship -for example alpha had better ace2 binding than delta but clearly delta was more transmissible - think the other key part here will be what the relative escape from BA.1 and BA.2 is...
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Replying to
It's notably very good at Delta breakthrough - that makes sense given the variant seems to grow well in India.
(rightmost plot if I understand it correctly)
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Sharing some preliminary results just obtained regarding the new Omicron variants BA.2.75. In short, BA.2.75 is more neutralization evasive than BA.2.12.1, but less compared to BA.4/5. BA.2.75 also exhibits higher ACE2 affinity than BA.4/5. (1/n)
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Yet another study of improved survival with 4th dose of vaccine compared with 3rd, nationwide Sweden, here for age 80+
thelancet.com/journals/lanep
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You can see the primary ring around Jupiter formed from dust ejected from the moon Metis quite clearly in these images.
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.@NASAWebb can gaze into the universe's depths, but what can it do nearby? These test images of Jupiter & some of its moons show that Webb can observe faint objects near bright ones, so it may be able to see vapor plumes spewing from ocean worlds!
blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/1
read image description
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I’d like to go on record that I am entirely, unambiguously opposed to unexplained viral hemorrhagic fevers.
(And I am not sure how worried to be on a scale of chill to HOLY SHIT but obviously this is something that is already being acted upon by experts in country. Trust them.)
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3 people have died and 13 have been affected by an unknown illness in Tanzania.
The symptoms are reported to range from a fever, severe headache, fatigue, and nose bleeding.
Authorities are investigating and have urged Tanzanians to stay calm 
bbc.in/3uJThzg
bbc.in/3uJThzg
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Beautiful how this experiment explains why BA.5 is somewhat fitter than BA.4 despite their Spikes being identical.
Spike is most important, but other genes matter, too.
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Another undesirable feature of the BA.5 variant: Enhanced antagonism of innate immunity not seen in prior Omicron variants (BA.1, BA.2) biorxiv.org/content/10.110
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Hindenburg usually short sell, this time they are effectively short selling Elon. Twitter is well down on the $44 he offered, but is going up now as some guess he will be forced to buy at or near the original offer.
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We have accumulated a significant long position in shares of Twitter.
Twitter’s complaint poses a credible threat to Musk’s empire.
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The trend of COVID-19 cases in some states in India where BA.2.75 is seemingly growing.
All on their own y-axis scale.
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In UP's Fatehpur, an auto rickshaw ferrying 27 commuters was stopped by the local police during a check. The auto was later seized.
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Dust off this graph …
BA.2.75 is S-gene positive. It would be yet *another* swing in the S gene pendulum if successful in the UK 🇬🇧
We’ve learned to keep an eye on new variants with opposite Δ69-70 👀
TaqPath S-gene amplification: ✅❌✅❌✅❌✅ <— BA.2.75
read image description
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If you want to browse through the zoo of Pango lineages, what mutations they have and how they relate, you can have a look at this Nextstrain tree.
Ironically, BA.2.75 seems to continue the flip-flopping of the S:69/70 deletion highlighted in yellow. 3/
nextstrain.org/staging/nextcl
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Moderna's bivalent BA.4 adapted vaccine will be produced only for the American market. For European market they will produce a bivalent BA.1 adapted vaccine, apparently due to differences in regulatory procedures. Why is Europe so backward in these things?
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Infection control measures in the general ward are based on controlling droplet transmission, in the covid section they are rated against aerosols. All the staff and patients could have been exposed - fortunately staff were dubious and put the patient in a private room.
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A patient was admitted to the ICU yesterday who, being 9 days after a positive RAT test was deemed "clear of the virus" and so went to the general (non covid) ICU ward. Nurses were suspicious of the cough, did a PCR which was +ve with a Ct of 23. Infection control shambles.
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NSW hospitalisation numbers for the winter BA.4/BA.5 showing some early signs of a slowing climb - but capacity could be an issue here in part - and ICU cases still stable.
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Confident prediction: in 2023 almost 100% of cases will be reinfections - especially in those older than one year old.
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The same value is in fact reported by the ONS.
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Are we back to immunological square one? No.
For example, England, 70% of infections are still in first-timers, who account for just 15% of the country. Reinfections are happening, but the pop’n still has some protection against catching even BA5. 6/
theatlantic.com/health/archive
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This is supported from epidemiological data in the UK
where perhaps just under half of people had pre-Omicron primary infections this would be consistent with around 70% of Omicron infections being primary infections
medrxiv.org/content/10.110
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Qatar study of the effectiveness of a previous infection against symptomatic BA.4/BA.5 reinfection:
pre Omicron infection: 15.1% (95% CI: -47.1 to 50.9%);
Omicron infection: 76.1% (95% CI: 54.9 to 87.3%)
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