|
|
| Re: COVID 2020 vs. 2021 (1843266) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > OTChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: COVID 2020 vs. 2021 |
|
|
Posted by Stephen Bauman on Wed Aug 4 19:38:11 2021, in response to Re: COVID 2020 vs. 2021, posted by Jeff Rosen on Wed Aug 4 17:19:53 2021. Thank you for the link.It isn't often a News Corp piece provides links to its sources. Barrons is a financial magazine, which explains the stock symbols next to company names. The author has written many financial articles. This one appears an effort to translate medical news for the Wall Street types. The article cites two non-peer reviewed articles. The first suggests that the Lambda variant is dangerous. The author interprets the second to suggest that Lambda won't be that bad. I suppose this is the Barrons' version of "fair and balanced reporting." The first: A study posted July 28 on the website bioRxiv by University of Tokyo researchers reported that Lambda variants have alterations in the virus’s surface spikes that increase their attraction to the entry channels of our cells, while also being harder to recognize by antibodies targeting the spikes of the original virus. The Tokyo study hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, but it suggests that antibodies generated by the vaccine from Pfizer (ticker: PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) found it almost 1.5 times harder to neutralize Lambda variants than the original virus. The second: A July 3 study published on the same website by researchers at New York University Medical School tested the variant with antibodies from both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the vaccine from Moderna (MRNA). Compared with the original virus strain, the NYU team found that Lambda was about 3-times more resistant to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine antibodies, and 2.3-times resistant to Moderna-generated antibodies. Lambda was also slightly more resistant to the antibodies contained in the cocktail treatment from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN). Still, Regeneron’s cocktail was able to neutralize Lambda variants well, said the NYU scientists. They also concluded that the average levels of antibodies generated by either the Moderna or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are more than enough to protect against Lambda. Mr. Alpert is confusing the Lambda variant immunity to a vaccine and its immunity to a therapeutic. Somebody has to catch Covid for a therapeutic like Regeneron to be of any help. Lambda will not be contained by resorting to therapeutics. He also missed some fine print in the article regarding the ability of the the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to neutralize the Lambda variant. Analysis of the infectivity of the pseudotyped viruses on ACE2.293T cells, normalized for particle number, showed that the lambda spike protein increased infectivity by 2-fold. The increase was due to the L452Q mutation; the other mutations (G75V-T76I, F490S, T859N and Δ246-252) had no significant effect on infectivity (Figure S1C). This means that a similar number of Lambda variant particles will be twice as infectious as the original virus. Not mentioned is what happens if the number of Lambda variant particles is more than 1000 times those of the original virus. The Lambda and Delta variants produce a lot more virus particles, once inside the body. Mr. Alpert also did not repeat this caveat the NYU authors inserted: While our findings suggest that current vaccines will provide protection against variants identified to date, the results do not preclude the possibility that novel variants will emerge that are more resistant to current vaccines. |
|
(There are no responses to this message.)
|
|